W. Stanford Reid: An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy 9780773572188

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preface mcgill-queen’s studies in the history of religion Volumes in this series have been supported by the Jackman Foundation of Toronto. series two In memory of George Rawlyk Donald Harman Akenson, Editor

1 Marguerite Bourgeoys and Montreal, 1640–1665 Patricia Simpson

10 Gentle Eminence A Life of Cardinal Flahiff P. Wallace Platt

2 Aspects of the Canadian Evangelical Experience G.A. Rawlyk, editor

11 Culture, Religion, and Demographic Behaviour Catholics and Lutherans in Alsace, 1750–1870 Kevin McQuillan

3 Infinity, Faith, and Time Christian Humanism and Renaissance Literature John Spencer Hill 4 The Contribution of Presbyterianism to the Maritime Provinces of Canada Charles H.H. Scobie and G.A. Rawlyk, editors 5 Labour, Love, and Prayer Female Piety in Ulster Religious Literature, 1850–1914 Andrea Ebel Brozyna 6 The Waning of the Green Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto, 1887–1922 Mark G. McGowan 7 Religion and Nationality in Western Ukraine The Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867–1900 John-Paul Himka 8 Good Citizens British Missionaries and Imperial States, 1870–1918 James G. Greenlee and Charles M. Johnston 9 The Theology of the Oral Torah Revealing the Justice of God Jacob Neusner

12 Between Damnation and Starvation Priests and Merchants in Newfoundland Politics, 1745–1855 John P. Greene 13 Martin Luther, German Saviour German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917–1933 James M. Stayer 14 Modernity and the Dilemma of North American Anglican Identities, 1880–1950 William H. Katerberg 15 The Methodist Church on the Prairies, 1896–1914 George Emery 16 Christian Attitudes Towards the State of Israel Paul Charles Merkley 17 A Social History of the Cloister Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime Elizabeth Rapley 18 Households of Faith Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 Nancy Christie, editor

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Preface 19 Blood Ground Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianity in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799–1853 Elizabeth Elbourne 20 A History of Canadian Catholics Gallicanism, Romanism, and Canadianism Terence J. Fay

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26 Evangelicals and the Continental Divide The Conservative Protestant Subculture in Canada and the United States Sam Reimer 27 Christians in a Secular World The Canadian Experience Kurt Bowen

21 The View from Rome Archbishop Stagni’s 1915 Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question John Zucchi, translator and editor

28 Anatomy of a Seance A History of Spirit Communication in Central Canada Stan McMullin

22 The Founding Moment Church, Society, and the Construction of Trinity College William Westfall

29 With Skilful Hand The Story of King David David T. Barnard

23 The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches Haim Genizi

30 Faithful Intellect Samuel S. Nelles and Victoria University Neil Semple

24 Governing Charities Church and State in Toronto’s Catholic Archdiocese, 1850–1950 Paula Maurutto

31 W. Stanford Reid An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy A. Donald MacLeod

25 Anglicans and the Atlantic World High Churchmen, Evangelicals, and the Quebec Connection Richard W. Vaudry 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 NineteenthCentury Ontario William Westfall 3 An Evangelical Mind Nathanael Burwash and the Methodist Tradition in Canada, 1839-1918 Marguerite Van Die

4 The Dévotes Women and Church in SeventeenthCentury 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

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7 A World Mission Canadian Protestantism and the Quest for a New International Order, 1918–1939 Robert Wright

17 Christian Ethics and Political Economy in North America A Critical Analysis of U.S. and Canadian Approaches P. Travis Kroeker

8 Serving the Present Age Revivalism, Progressivism, and the Methodist Tradition in Canada Phyllis D. Airhart

18 Pilgrims in Lotus Land Conservative Protestantism in British Columbia, 1917–1981 Robert K. Burkinshaw

9 A Sensitive Independence Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881–1925 Rosemary R. Gagan

19 Through Sunshine and Shadow The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Evangelicalism, and Reform in Ontario, 1874–1930 Sharon Cook

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 McIntyre 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

20 Church, College, and Clergy A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844–1994 Brian J. 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, 1827–1905 Eldon Hay 25 Methodists and Women’s Education in Ontario, 1836–1925 Johanne Selles 26 Puritanism and Historical Controversy William Lamont

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Priscilla and Stanford Reid on board the Pelee, 1960 (courtesy the Estate, Stanford and Priscilla Reid, per Hugh Anderson, executor)

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W. Stanford Reid An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy a . d o n a l d macleod

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2004 isbn 0-7735-2770-2 (cloth) isbn 0-7735-2818-0 (paper) Legal deposit third quarter 2004 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication MacLeod, A. Donald W. Stanford Reid : an evangelical Calvinist in the academy / A. Donald MacLeod. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-7735-2770-2 (cloth) isbn 0-7735-2818-0 (pbk) 1. Reid, W. Stanford (William Stanford), 1913–1996. 2. College teachers – Canada – Biography. 3. Presbyterian Church in Canada – Clergy – Biography. 4. Presbyterians – Canada – Biography. 5. Calvinists – Canada – Biography. 6. Evangelicalism – Canada. 7. Authors – Canadian (English) – 20th century – Biography. I. Title. la2325.r43m32 2004 378.1′2′092 c2004-903840-0 This book was typeset by True to Type in 10/12 Sabon

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To the memory of alexander napier macleod To the future of alexander newnham macleod The heritage and the hope of the presbyterian church in canada

“We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ulysses”

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Contents

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Abbreviations Pictures

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Introduction 3 1 A Passionate Pedigree Robust Reids and Second Coming Stanfords 10 2 Growing Up Privileged and Presbyterian, 1913–1935 Westmount and McGill between the Wars 32 3 Defining a Precocious Piety, 1922–1938 Finding God in Unconventional Places 47 4 Setting Course Professionally and Maritally, 1938–1941 Credentialed Academically, Committed Matrimonially 66 5 Young Pastor and Part-time Academic, 1941–1951 Crosscurrents in Quebec and McGill in the Forties 81 6 A Confessional Canadian Presbyterian, 1941–1951 Ascendant Barthianism and the Limits of Ecumenism 92 7 Academic and Administrator, 1951–1962 McGill during and after Duplessis 114 8 Staying the Course, 1952–1958 Fundamentalism, Christianity Today, and Evangelical Identity 126

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9 Persevering Presbyterian, 1952–1965 Denominational Promoter and Gadfly Journalist 142 10 McGill’s Unsettling Putsch, 1958–1965 The Loss of a Patron 164 11 Heady Years at Guelph, 1965–1970 Constructing a History Department 180 12 Academic Autumn, 1970–1979 Biographer, Raconteur, and Cognoscente 202 13 Embattled Mainline Evangelical, 1966–1981 Testing Denominational Limits 217 14 Interpreting Calvin among Calvinists, 1953–1987 Who Speaks for John Calvin? 239 15 A Painful Parting, 1977–1983 Justifying Justification 257 16 Church Union Redivivus, 1980–1984 Among Australia’s Continuing Presbyterians 280 17 Lengthening Shadows, 1989–1996 Coping with Age, Blindness, Loneliness 295 Epilogue 299 Appendix: Bibliography of the Writings of W. Stanford Reid 303 Notes 325 Bibliography 383 Index 393

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ta b l e s Writing this book has been very much a labour of love. Stanford Reid was not only my honours adviser at McGill, he was interim moderator when I served the Mille Isles Presbyterian Church from 1957 to 1959 and, over the years, a frequent visitor and trusted friend with whom I shared many projects and interests. Thus, I cannot claim total objectivity in the composition of this book. At the same time I cannot take credit for his opinions, some of which are highly controversial. He was outspoken and opinionated, and his papers demonstrate that quality of strongly held views. Many people have travelled with me in this seven-year odyssey of discovery. Stanford Reid’s papers are scattered in the archival collections of at least four institutions: Westminster Seminary; the University of Guelph; the Institute for Christian Studies in downtown Toronto; and particularly the Presbyterian Church in Canada (pcc), to whose archives he consigned the bulk of his material, including four indispensable scrapbooks. It would be impossible for me adequately to thank pcc archivists Kim Arnold and Bob Anger for their cheerful assistance. Stanford Reid’s papers there are in the process of being meticulously catalogued, a boon I did not have in the early stages of research on this book. I would like to thank the four trustees of the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust, who have provided unfailing encouragement and support. Hugh Anderson, Campbellville, Ontario, as Stanford and Priscilla Reid’s executor, was most helpful, giving me precious time just before his untimely death only two years after Stanford Reid. Particularly am

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I grateful to Dr E.A. Stewart and Barbara Reid, Stanford’s brother and sister-in-law, Knowlton, Quebec, who have likewise cheered me on and expressed appreciation. Their encouragement has been pivotal in the completion of the project. Other names come to mind. Indeed, there are so many people who have entered into my research that some are bound to be left off what can at best be only a partial list of all my sources. I would like to thank Joy Nugent, Kinnear’s Mills, Quebec; Rev. Ross Davidson, Thetford Mines, Quebec; Florence L. Reid, Huntingdon, Quebec; Bernard Kellom, Niagara Falls, Ontario; Margaret Griffiths, Surrey County Council Archives; Helen Whittle, the Storrington and District Museum, West Sussex; Rev. Dr Jim Winter, Storrington; the Honourable Charles Stuart, Farnham, Surrey; Douglas, Earl of Moray, Darnaway Castle, Forres, Scotland; Dr John Moll, Sheffield; Sue Mills, librarian/ archivist, Regent’s Park College, Oxford; Rev. Phil Miller, Sault Ste Marie; A.R.D. Nesbitt, Toronto; Grace Mullen, archivist, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia; Earl Robinson, Manchester, New Hampshire; Arthur W. Kuschke, Dresher, Pennsylvania; Mark Frazier Lloyd, director, University of Pennsylvania Archives and Record Centre; Eithne Lee Davis, Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland; Moira Barclay-Fernie, former clerk of the Presbytery of Montreal, Presbyterian Church in Canada; Russell Merrifield, Toronto; Rev. Dr Frank Kik, Fort Mill, South Carolina; Mary Pledger, Victoria, British Columbia; Dr Alistair Stewart, Harrogate; Kim Arnold and Bob Anger, archivists of the Presbyterian Church in Canada; Professor Hereward Senior of McGill University; Principal John Vissers, Dr Clyde Ervine, Librarian Dan Shute, and Caroline O’Connor, all of Presbyterian College; Rev. Dr Barry Mack, St Lambert, Quebec; Rev. George Malcolm, Pickering, Ontario; Rev. Peter Bush, Mitchell, Ontario; Don Nisbet, Wardsville, Ontario; Gordon Burr, senior archivist, Records Management, McGill University Archives; Mme Louise Pelletier, Archives de Montréal; Dr Margaret Sanderson, formerly of the Scottish Records Office, Edinburgh; Professors Terry Crowley, Elizabeth Ewan, Margaret Evans, and Mary Rogers, and Deans David Murray and Murdo MacKinnon, and the late Professor Donald Masters, all of the University of Guelph, along with history department secretary Pat Law MacPherson and Ellen Morrison of their archives; Professor Russell Bishop, Gloucester, Massachusetts; Professor Robert Wilson, Acadia Divinity School, Wolfville, Nova Scotia; Margaret Miller, Presbyterian Record, Don Mills, Ontario; Margaret Munro, Saskatoon; Professor John Moir, Port Dover, Ontario; the late Rev. Dr Peter Darch, Guelph; Rev. Dr Mariano DiGangi, Ottawa; Rev. Dr Lorna Hillian, Kelowna, British Columbia; Peter Ellis, Fergus,

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Ontario; Charles Salmon, Binbrook, Ontario; Dale Ward, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; Rev. Bruce Cossar, Kingston, Ontario; Cathy Knox, senior minister’s secretary, Knox Church, Toronto; Richard Harms, archivist, Heritage Hall, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan; past principal Allan M. Harman, Presbyterian Theological College, Rev. David Innes, and Rev. Bob Thomas, all of Melbourne, Australia, Rev. David Burke, now senior minister, Orchard Rd Church, Singapore, and Rev. Graham and Beth Lyman and family, now retired in the Barossa Valley, South Australia. Errors must in every case be attributed to the author and not to those who have so freely given of their time. It was impossible to use all the material they generously shared but much of what was provided will rest in the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Family Fonds in the archives of the Presbyterian Church in Canada in Don Mills, Ontario. As a courtesy, I allowed President Samuel Logan, Westminster Seminary, and President Robert Godfrey, Westminster West Seminary, Escondido, California, to read an early manuscript of chapter 15, but I must take full responsibility for my attempt to represent Stanford Reid objectively and fairly in a bruising and bitter controversy. He would not wish, nor would I, to do harm to an institution to which we both owe so much. I am grateful to Rev. John Vaudry, Montreal, and his brother Professor Richard Vaudry, King’s College, Edmonton, both of whom read the manuscript at a very early stage. Dean Stewart Gill, Trinity College, University of Melbourne, read the original chapter 16 and provided useful insights, as did Rev. Dr Allan Harman, Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia. My brothers in the New England Reformed Fellowship provided insights when chapter 15 was read as a paper at their September 1998 meeting. I also appreciated the friendship and support of my colleague for, alas, only two years on the Tyndale Seminary faculty: Dr Timothy Larsen, now teaching at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. I am grateful for the encouragement of his colleague, Professor Mark Noll, whose encouragement came at a crucial point. Thanks also to Professor Marguerite Van Die of Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, who read an early draft. Among a variety of editors that have screened this book I cite Dodie Riggs of Hyde Park, Massachusetts and Lillian Bray of Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan. Copy editor Lesley Barry, now of the Canadian Medical Association, Ottawa, has been superb in her meticulous care for details and inconsistencies. Rev. William Manson, Brighton, Ontario, was enlisted as a proofreader, a service he performed admirably. Above all, my thanks to my family: my sons Alex, Toronto, with whom I share a common vocation, and Kenneth, Dublin, who pro-

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vided invaluable computer help. Finally, completion of this project would have been impossible without the assistance of my wife, Judy, who shares with me the privilege of being adjunct professor of church history at Tyndale Theological Seminary, Toronto. In this case, my profound gratitude is not a matter of conventional etiquette. Without her professional experience as an historian, her patient proofreading, and her unfailing encouragement, this manuscript would never have seen the light of day. This book is sent out with the desire that those principles for which Stanford Reid stood and which have lapsed in our own day may be rediscovered as the story of his life is told. A. Donald MacLeod Brighton, Ontario, Canada 23 February 2004, the feast day of Polycarp, bishop and martyr

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Abbreviations

aacs

American Association of Christian Schools

ccf

Co-operative Commonwealth Federation

crc

Christian Reformed Church

iarfa

International Association for Reformed Faith and Action

ivcf

Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship

lamp

Life and Mission Project

opc

Orthodox Presbyterian Church (established 1936)

pca

Presbyterian Church in America (established 1973)

pcc

The Presbyterian Church in Canada

pc(usa) Presbyterian Church in the United States of America res

Reformed Ecumenical Synod

rpc(es) Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (1956/7–1982) tmr

Town of Mount Royal

upna

United Presbyterian Church of North America (1858–1958)

upusa

United Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (1958–1983)

wcc

World Council of Churches

wms

Women’s Missionary Society

wsr

William Stanford Reid

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The Reid family, 1929: Stewart, W.D., Stanford, Daisy (courtesy of Dr E.A. Stewart Reid qc)

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Stanford Reid in front of the fireplace, Warden’s Residence, Douglas Hall, McGill University, 1954 (courtesy Dr E.A. Stewart Reid)

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W. Stanford Reid, F. Cyril James, Ray E. Powell, and hrh Prince Philip in front of Bishop Hall at the Residence’s official opening 15 May 1962 (courtesy McGill University Archives)

Professors of History Perez Zagorin, W. Stanford Reid, and J.I. Cooper, 1 November 1963 (courtesy McGill University Archives)

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Priscilla and Stanford Reid exploring the ruins of Ephesus, summer 1966 (courtesy the Estate, Stanford and Priscilla Reid, per Hugh Anderson, executor)

Stanford Reid made Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph, 5 October 1979. From left to right: Terry Crowley, Department of History; Chancellor Pauline McGibbon; W. Stanford Reid; President Donald Forster (courtesy Audio Visual services Department, University of Guelph)

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Being a convinced Calvinist I believe that the New Testament clearly teaches that Christ guides his people by his providence. My ministry may be different from most. As a result of my lecturing and writing I am able to take a stand among scholars and since they know my position, I believe that it is a testimony to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. W. Stanford Reid in a letter, 7 September 1974

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Site of Reid’s Church, “The Concession” Road, Kinnear’s Mills, Quebec (courtesy Sarah MacDonald)

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There is a large pink granite boulder by a deserted gravel byway in northern Megantic County, rural Quebec. The road to the site has always been known locally as “the Concession,” and it lies between the twelfth and thirteenth ranges of the township of Leeds. As one approaches, an inscription on the stone becomes visible. It states simply “This cairn marks the site of Reid’s Church, 1854–1952.” There is a savage beauty to the Palmer River valley below. Scrub grows where once there were fields of grain. With the help of old photographs and a careful inspection of the topography of the ground, one can stake out the dimensions of a country church once large enough to seat a hundred and eighty worshippers. Alongside the church, the lay of the land discloses the faint outline of a drive shed that once, it was said, could accommodate sixteen horses. There is an eerie silence. The music of precentor Joseph Reid, who led the church’s 1870 Building Committee and contributed sixty dollars for its erection, no longer fills the hillside with the old psalm tunes. The inscription on the cairn serves as an epitaph for a way of life irretrievably gone. Rural anglophone and Scottish Quebec now survives merely as a government-sponsored patrimoine for tourists. During summers in nearby Kinnear’s Mills, one is greeted by university students dressed in crinoline and hoop skirts attempting to resurrect a past that seems quaint and surreal. Only one family with the name Reid survives of those who filled Reid’s Church a century ago. What remains provides an obituary for an era – and a faith – that today seems strangely alien.

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Recreating and interpreting the past was the life vocation of William Stanford Reid, Joseph’s grandson. “The past is a hobby of Dr Reid’s,” he stated in a 1950 self-scripted Canadian Broadcasting Corporation program. It was more than a hobby. History was his passion. The study of its history is an obligation on any society, secular or sacred, that seeks self-understanding. Reid did his best to promote such selfawareness and popularize it. As raconteur he could make history come alive. Sometimes the narrative could carry him away. He was at his best providing after-dinner entertainment or livening up a sleepy afternoon lecture with a telling anecdote. Humorous, provocative, irritating, opinionated, no one ever accused him of being boring. But in all that he spoke and wrote there was a sense of loss, an attempt to recapture the significance of events that had been ignored or, worse, misrepresented. He was a champion of unpopular causes, a controversialist who was not afraid to engage even the doughtiest defender of conventional historical wisdom. That sense of loss was inevitable for a man whose life spanned much of the twentieth century. Stanford Reid was born the son of a minister, his father almost forty-eight, his mother thirty-five, a year before the momentous events of the summer of 1914. Two blocks away from the scene of his birth, in upper Westmount, then home of Canada’s business elite, his father’s church was being constructed as a powerful – and now mocking – reminder of Canadian Protestant Christendom. The consecration of the new building took place in October of 1914, just as the old certainties were being destroyed by the guns of the trenches in France. The Great War would irretrievably tarnish the shiny new gold leaf of the dome of Stanley Presbyterian Church. Today a thousand new Canadians from the Caribbean sing and sway under it to their holiness rhythms. Soon there would follow a conflict closer to home. Church Union in Canada pitted Presbyterian against Presbyterian, Unionists against the so-called non-concurring. In these battles Stanford Reid’s father, the minister of prestigious Stanley “proudly Presbyterian” Church, became a late entry leader. The decision to stay out of the merger in 1925 would shape and determine his son’s future. Once a part of churchgoing Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, the continuing Presbyterians were easily dismissed as a rump, or “stay-outers.” Stanford Reid had a cause: keeping the faith of previous centuries, the faith of the Reids for generations, being true to one’s roots and history. If he had anything to do with it Moses’ bush would continue to burn. As the denomination’s motto stated, Nec tamen consumebatur: “Neither yet was it consumed.”

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Like his father before him, by conviction and personality, Reid would become a combative conservative in the new, post–1925 denomination as it searched for an identity. The defining moment for him was leaving Canada and choosing to do academic theological studies at a small American divinity school. His years at Westminster Seminary confirmed him as a confessional loyalist. The Confession was that of 1643, drafted in Westminster Abbey as an ecumenical statement, but in the end defining the Presbyterian – or, as he preferred, “Reformed” – churches. He had been brought up memorizing the Shorter Catechism, as were most Scottish children of his day. At Westminster Seminary his allegiance to that historic creedal statement of Presbyterian belief was affirmed and strengthened. He became an articulate defender of the faith of John Calvin and John Knox, a faith reinterpreted by Abraham Kuyper and Benjamin Warfield. He was one of a small and frequently despised minority of informed and committed Calvinists. He set out to place Calvin and Knox in the context of history. Their lives and legacy became the focus of much of his lifelong historical inquiry and research. Subsequent education made him unusual at the time among fellow confessional conservatives. Some might dismiss Stanford Reid as “that fundamentalist.” They had done that to Westminster Seminary’s founder, J. Gresham Machen. Recent scholarship has demonstrated this to be a complete misunderstanding.1 Machen was no fundamentalist but a confessional Presbyterian. So was his pupil Stanford Reid. The distinction is an important one. Neither man would accept the label “fundamentalist.” They did not carry its cultural baggage. Neither, for instance, were teetotallers, and the consumption of alcohol was a litmus test for fundamentalists. They refused to crusade against evolution. Both went to the theatre and had extensive cultural interests. Each was an historian and sought – as Reid said of Machen – “to prove the reliability of the biblical record by a sound historical investigation and analysis of the evidence provided by the documents.”2 Reid agreed when Machen stated categorically: “The centre and core of all the Bible is history.”3 He also approved another statement of Machen’s: “The depreciation of the intellect, with the exaltation in the place of it of the feelings or of the will, is, we think, a basic fact in modern life, which is rapidly leading to a condition in which men neither know anything nor care anything about the doctrinal content of the Christian religion, and in which there is in general a lamentable intellectual decline.”4 Neither Machen nor his student Stanford Reid was a fundamentalist.

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Even Machen, respected scholar that he was, lacked what Reid went on to gain: an earned doctorate. Reid’s came, in 1942, from the prestigious University of Pennsylvania History Department. At the time few who shared his faith in what they called “historic Christianity” had achieved such distinction. Indeed, within that circle there was widespread suspicion of the academy. In the previous half century, Reid’s contemporaries had seen their belief system shunted from the heart of American educational life to its periphery. One by one, institutions founded to promote and propagate Christianity had changed course. As a consequence, some orthodox Christians had retreated into antiintellectualism. Their Bible schools and colleges were often not places of academic inquiry – let alone academic respectability – but rather fortresses in which the mind was regarded as a dangerous deterrent to faith and morals. Always there was a “slippery slope” mentality that looked for certain abandonment of the gospel when an individual went off to study away from a protective cocoon of piety and passion. Stanford Reid was the exception. When Christianity Today was founded in 1956 to demonstrate that orthodox Protestantism could be a respectable and responsible option for thinking people, Reid was among the first to be sought out as an editor at large. He had earned a reputation as an academic who had remained true to the “faith once for all delivered to the saints.” He could protect the faith of youthful believers in a “pagan” university, be an example and mentor to those seeking a place for head as well as heart, and reverse the brain drain of former fundamentalists who had abandoned their early allegiances in favour of fashionable academic scepticism. McGill University, where Reid taught for twenty-three years, was one place where a cleric who taught a secular subject would not be regarded as a pariah. In francophone Quebec in the 1940s and 1950s, post-secondary education was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. McGill, as a bastion of the anglophone establishment, was not averse to sheltering religious professionals even if they taught subjects non-religious. McGill was not like the erstwhile denominational schools of the United States that had shed their faith commitments with relief and in reaction.5 Reid’s Presbyterian commitment was acceptable in a school that owed its existence to the generosity of a Presbyterian benefactor6 and whose longest serving principal7 had been sternly and uncompromisingly Christian. Each weekday morning at 9:15 the gates of the university opened for the chairman of the Protestant School Board of Montreal, the minister of First Presbyterian Church, to go from his manse east of the university through its grounds to his office in its McTavish Street headquarters.8

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Rev. Malcolm Campbell embodied the powerful educational engagement of Presbyterianism. When the Reids moved to Guelph in 1965, as the Montreal Protestant hegemony was ending, they encountered yet another community where being a Presbyterian minister opened doors rather than closed them. The city’s landscape may have been dominated by a church that took its cue from Rome, but Knox and St Andrew’s Churches provided a Protestant and Scots alternative. One would expect a man wearing the kilt to follow in the faith of John Knox. In both Montreal and Guelph, Stanford Reid was not penalized by the establishment for his faith, as observant Christian faculty were elsewhere and as he might be today. Within the secular university, he was given the freedom to be unapologetically religious. Ridicule and backstabbing happened but at least it was discreet and muted. Not that Reid was your typical Presbyterian divine. He stood out against the Christendom model of conventional Protestantism long before Christendom had died. A student founder of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in 1930, he advocated an evangelical faith that was anything but popular in that era of liberal ascendancy. He turned from what he described as Inter-Varsity’s pietism to a sterner, more doctrinal Calvinism, but he was unashamedly willing to count himself an evangelical in the judicatories of his church, as well as in faculty meetings and in the lecture hall. Only two teachers at McGill during his time there were willing to be so numbered: the Plymouth Brother C.P. Martin, professor of anatomy at the Medical School, and W. Stanford Reid. They stood alone. Reid’s faith was anything but defensive. He challenged students (including those who were observant Christians) to be engaged in intellectual pursuits. He rigorously defended the centrality of religious truth in every area of life and refused to ghettoize it. He was fearless in his denunciation of any attempt to marginalize his beliefs. He would take on unpopular causes – such as that of the 1949 Asbestos strikers – and stand out against any form of tyranny, religious or political. A regular contributor to the press, particularly the Montreal Gazette and Montreal Star, he was articulate and direct, challenging injustice and unafraid of negative reaction. In church assemblies, where he was a frequent participant and irritant, he delighted the laity by exposing the pomposities of ecclesiastical power. His outspokenness aroused strong emotions and exposed profound polarities. In debate he could be formidable. Throughout his life, Stanford Reid moved in many circles, networking effectively in several milieus: historical, academic, theological, and

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cultural. He embraced a wide variety of interests. He was always, almost to the end of his life, in frequent demand as speaker or preacher. He wrote prolifically. He spent much time in research and travel. He would play the piano when asked to at meetings and was willing to preach in French, was passable in German, and taught himself Dutch. He always read the New Testament in the original Greek. But his eclecticism came with a price. As he aged, as with all who have a ready opinion about every subject, he opened himself up to the twin perils of predictability and superficiality. In spite of the sense of loss that formed a kind of leitmotif throughout his life, Reid was a person of confidence and hope. He would frequently state that his theological convictions gave him an antidote to the prevailing pessimism of the times. History provided not a confirmation of downward spiral but a continual reminder of a divine sovereignty that energized the movement of time. So many of his causes appeared to be lost, but he clung to the ultimate purpose of human existence. His achievements were considerable. He taught thousands of students, some of whom he infuriated and a fortunate few he mentored. He goaded associates and students to produce, to research, to write, to publish – always with excellence. The list of institutions that he helped establish is long and impressive: a church in suburban Montreal, a history department in one of Canada’s newer universities, a Scottish Studies program, a research facility filled with original sources for Scottish history, graduate programs in several schools. Stanford Reid, as his life unfolded, was a complex and multi-faceted individual. He was a Canadian original: a man who broke out of the insularity of his homeland and developed an international reputation. His was a significant (if often misunderstood and undervalued) voice in the post-Union Presbyterian Church in Canada. But he was also a typical Canadian achiever: one of a generation who rose to prominence in a post-World War II world of unprecedented opportunity. He not only taught and wrote history, he was a part of the history of his time. In Australia following retirement, in a publication entitled “Look To The Rock,” Stanford Reid would emphasize the importance of maintaining and sustaining a heritage. “Look to the rock” is a quotation from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Reid writes: “He is thinking of Israel, the People of God. They have been hewn from a rock, and it is to their roots that he is calling them back. He wants them to realise that they have not come from shifting sand, but from roots which have dug down deep into the soil, which are immoveable and exemplary for them.”9

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Stanford Reid was rooted in everything represented by the old family church on “the Concession Road”: family loyalty, a distinctive legacy of intellect and energy, a tradition of disciplined hard work, a respect for educational achievement, a cultural identity as both immigrant Scot and anglophone Quebecker, and, above all, a strong heritage of Christian faith. It is to those roots that we now turn.

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1 A Passionate Pedigree Robust Reids and Second Coming Stanfords

Stanford Reid is best known as a chronicler and preserver of Scotland’s history. He proudly wore the kilt and traced his lineage back to a Reid sept of the clan MacGregor. But as always with him, the truth was more complex. William Stanford Reid was half English. While the “William” and the “Reid” represented a Scots legacy, “Stanford,” the name by which he was always called, was unmistakably Sassenach. His mother was London born, of working-class stock. His was a dual Scots and English heritage, tempered on his father’s side by three generations in Canada, and seasoned with a clear Quebec anglophone identity. The bloodlines were strong in William Stanford Reid. In him the Reid genes, shaped in his father’s case by environment as much as heredity, were unmistakably present. There was a Reid physiognomy that made him immediately visually identifiable. His father was, like all the Reids, an individual of strong opinions, shaped by his rise from rural poverty to leading churchman — an ascent not uncommon in his generation of self-made men. Articulate, forceful, and controversial, his years of leadership in Canada’s largest Protestant denomination made him a figure of considerable gravitas. Stanford Reid’s mother was one of those remarkable Victorian and Edwardian women who shaped an empire. His parents’ lives up to the time of his birth were pivotal in forming him. An understanding of who they were and what they had already achieved is essential for grasping the complex and often contradictory man their son became. William Reid, William Stanford Reid’s great-grandfather, came from Scotland to Canada via the United States in 1828. A farmer from

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Muthill in Perthshire, he had been evicted when the crops had failed for two seasons and he was unable to pay the rent. With daughter Ann, Will and his wife, Jean, set off for Hoboken, New Jersey, then a peaceful and pastoral village across from Manhattan. After a brief and unhappy time farming there, now with two additional children, the family left for Canada. They made their way up the Hudson River to Albany and then, through Lake Champlain, along the Richelieu to the St Lawrence, finally disembarking at St Basil across from Quebec City. There Will left his family and with two bachelor friends proceeded for seventy miles south along the recently opened Craig’s Road to a settlement named Leeds. He built a temporary cabin and then called for his family. Life on the fourteenth range of Leeds, where they had settled, was a hard scrabble. An 1837 petition to the government in Quebec, signed by eighteen heads of family, requested relief in the payment of land rents. The local factor, in a letter accompanying their petition to the governor in Quebec, pleaded with the government to grant a delay because “unless measures of amelioration are held out to them the settlement would speedily return to the original wilderness and their improvements become null and void.”1 Farming was at best marginal, the weather uncertain, the land rocky and barren, and a poor crop meant lean times in the winter. In Leeds four more children were added to the family. Born in 1838, Stanford’s grandfather, Joseph Reid, was the youngest. The children grew up in a tightly knit, interdependent community. Of the eighteen names on the 1837 petition only one separates William Reid from that of Andrew Dunn. Dunn’s daughter Janet would marry Joseph Reid. Andrew Dunn was Lowland Scots, from the Border: slow, thorough, and dependable. The Reids were emotional, artistic, and stubborn, or “typically Highland,” as Stanford Reid later characterized them. Joseph Reid married Janet Dunn, described as “a famous beauty,”2 when he was twenty. Joseph comes across in family lore as larger than life, with a quick temper, a reverence for book learning, an insatiable appetite for work, and a strong piety. He had dislocated his hip as a child and, lacking adequate medical care, used a cane the rest of his life. His share of the family acreage was inadequate to support his expanding family. To augment their income, he took up photography, taking tintypes at county fairs during the off season. At Reid’s Church he was both Sunday School superintendent and precentor, leading the praise with his “splendid tenor voice.” Joseph Reid’s oldest son, William Dunn Reid, remembered him as “a deeply religious man,” with family worship observed morning and evening “no matter what the hurry might be or what visitors might be in the home.” Sundays between church services were spent memorizing the Shorter Catechism

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or reading a sermon, usually by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, or familiar classics of religious devotion such as Baxter’s Saint’s Everlasting Rest, Allen’s Alarm To The Unconverted, and Doddridge’s Rise and Progression of Religion in the Soul. “I had read them all before I was eighteen years of age,” William Dunn would recall. William Dunn Reid, Stanford’s father, always known as W.D., was the second of the eight children. In his unpublished autobiography, written in his seventies, he described his childhood as “hard but happy.” Schooling, in an old log building on the Reid farm, was sporadic. The children might attend for four or five months, but on other occasions there might be no school at all. Much of what they learned was self-taught. After a day in the woods, W.D. went through Sangster’s Arithmetic, Lenny’s Grammar, and Goldsmith’s British History, and worked on his penmanship. W.D. was accident-prone, headstrong, and impetuous. One incident stands out from his childhood. As was the custom, the minister was expected to make an annual visitation to each home in the congregation. Prior to that visit, a chapter of the Bible would be assigned to the children to study so that when he arrived, he could ask questions as to what they had understood. “On one of his visits he had bungled me up somewhat on the 25th chapter of Matthew,” W.D. later wrote. “ I made up my mind I would not be caught again.” As head of the family, Joseph summoned the children to come to the minister’s Bible drill. Instead, W.D. took off to the woods. There he pondered “the many woes of a boy in a home visited by the minister.” As he waited, he thought, “I am in for it anyway, so I may as well make it something worthwhile.” He took a stone and threw it through the window of the room in which the catechizing was taking place. Retribution inevitably followed: “That night I went to bed counting how many years it would be until I would be able to thrash my father.” In 1880, at the age of forty, nine months after the birth of her eighth child,3 Janet Dunn suddenly succumbed to mastoiditis. W.D. never forgot the day his mother died: “Getting into my bed that night, I remember saying to myself, ‘This is the first night I have ever gone to bed without a mother.’” While Joseph was away on one of his forays to county fairs, Elizabeth, as the oldest and fourteen at the time of her mother’s death, cared for the rest of the children. W.D., next in line, assumed responsibility for his siblings. The children became self-reliant and self-sufficient and stayed close throughout the rest of their lives. For the motherless children, whose father was frequently absent, it was “one for all and all for each.” At seventeen, W.D. joined the 55th Battalion of the Megantic Light Infantry, Number 4 Company, and went away from home for the first

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time for a fortnight’s drill. As the only English-speaking Protestant battalion among 5,000 cadets there was bitter rivalry between them and “the Frenchies.” That autumn, living in a deserted house in Leeds village, he prepared for an elementary diploma exam in Sherbrooke. On its successful completion, he applied to teach in a nearby school at fourteen dollars a month but lost out when a local woman outbid him for twelve. What was he to do with his life? When he turned eighteen, W.D. announced to his father that he would not be staying on the farm. He was the first of the four boys to make the break. Only one son, John, remained on old homestead. The other two, Andrew and Allan, followed W.D. into the ministry and together they became known in the church as “The Quebec Trio.”4 Five years younger than W.D., Andrew was, according to W.D.’s son, “a typical Highlander, high strung, quick to take offence and just as quick to forgive.” Allan, the seventh of the eight children and twelve years younger, was more a Dunn, “Lowland with a great capacity for hard work, a consummate ability for organizing and for legal and political strategy and action.” W.D., as the oldest and lifelong leader of the trio, combined Reid and Dunn traits, embracing “the vigour and activism of Andrew” with “a large fund of Allan’s common sense and logical approach.” Their sister Eva was arguably even more remarkable and went further than any of her brothers. The sixth child, she moved to New York City while still in her teens. A stenographer by day, she took night courses to qualify for medical training. One of the first women graduates of Cornell Medical School, she chose psychiatry as her specialty, working the 4,800-bed St Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. with William Alanson White, pioneer of the “new psychiatry.” Eva went on to direct a women’s mental institution in Talmage, California, and then was superintendent for all psychiatric institutions in the state of California. For her service in France during the First World War, she was awarded the Croix de guerre by the French government. Her remarkable career concluded with an appointment as professor of psychiatry at the University of California in Berkeley. On her death, in 1940, the Montreal Star eulogized Eva Reid’s “brilliant career in medical circles in the south.”5 Eva epitomized the Reid tradition: academic brilliance, professional achievement, public service, and disciplined hard work. That tradition also stood W.D. in good stead. Leaving the farm at eighteen, he attended St Francis College in Richmond in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, working as a janitor to pay his way. It was here, with the encouragement and the preaching of local Presbyterian minister John MacLeod, that W.D. publicly professed Christian faith and joined

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Donald Harvey MacVicar (courtesy Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives pcca)

the church. Two years of study followed at Morrin College, Quebec, a feeder school to McGill. He now qualified for third year arts at McGill but had no money. Increasingly, though, he felt a call to the ministry. He wrote Donald Harvey MacVicar, principal of Presbyterian College in Montreal, which was affiliated with McGill University, and explained his predicament. By return mail, MacVicar wrote: “Come right on into the Presbyterian College, and if you let me know when you come, I will meet you at the station. Don’t worry about finances, as I will get you tutoring that will get you through all right.” On 15 September 1888, at the age of twenty-three, W.D. Reid arrived in Montreal. He recalled the day years later: “I saw Montreal for the first time, not knowing a soul in the big city with its 250,000 inhabitants. Little did I think that for the next fifty-seven years it was to be my home most of the time.”6 As he settled at the college, Donald MacVicar dropped by his room. “Next to my father, I don’t think any other man wielded such an influence upon me as did Dr MacVicar. He was a great preacher, a fine executive and organizer, and behind a

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somewhat severe exterior was a very kind heart and a splendid sense of humour. I shall never forget him.” Nor would he, or his son Stanford, ever lose the stamp Donald Harvey MacVicar left on their theology. W.D. was enlisted by MacVicar to be a strict confessionalist, a position to which he and his son would adhere unflinchingly over the next century. The nature of confessional subscription by those teaching in Presbyterian theological schools was under intense scrutiny. The 1881 General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland had dismissed professor William Robertson Smith, anticipating its American counterpart’s removal of professor Charles Augustus Briggs a decade later, both for creedal laxity. When the Presbyterian Church in Canada was formed in 1875, the basis of union (as in a previous merger in 1861) had been “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, being the inspired word of God, are the supreme and infallible rule of faith and life.” Alongside these were placed, as “subordinate standards,” the Westminster Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. The only exceptions to the doctrine therein contained were statements in the Confession dealing with matters of church and state. MacVicar, in a symposium article in the Presbyterian College Journal titled “The Westminster Confession of Faith,” written during W.D.’s second year at the College, after citing attempts for confessional change in other Presbyterian churches, confidently stated that: We have said enough to show in a general way the nature and extent of the current movement in favour of revision, reconstruction or relaxed subscription. To Canada belongs the honor of being conservative in this respect. The Presbyterian Churches here have turned their energies in other directions and spent their strength in practical work. They have been engrossed with the care of a great Home Mission field, embracing the larger half of the North American Continent, and have established successful missions to the heathen in the South Sea Islands, and in India and China. They have studied the things which make for peace, avoiding unnecessary debates of all sorts, and, under the guiding power of the Spirit of God, the Presbyterianism of the Dominion presents to the world an unbroken front.7

Within only three years MacVicar’s boast would have a hollow ring. At the age of seventy-one, MacVicar was found dead at his desk on 15 December 1902 by students concerned that he had not arrived for a lecture after returning from a meeting of the French Evangelization Committee at Montreal’s Knox Church. Reid, in his subsequent tribute to MacVicar as systematic theologian, emphasized the three pillars of his faith. “He held firmly,” he noted, “his belief in

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the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. He believed that not only a part, but the whole book from cover to cover, is the word of God.” Never was he without a Bible in the classroom. “He would ransack it from end to end, till he was sure that his doctrine was grounded upon its truth.”8 The substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ was the “one doctrine which he seemed to emphasize more than [any] other.” His classes heard him frequently repeat the words of I Peter: “He bore our sins in His own body on the tree.” And, in the last years of his life, W.D. noted a third distinctive: “the work of the Holy Spirit in the world.” “He seemed to me” Reid observed, “to emphasize this latter doctrine more and more as the days went by.”9 These three doctrines identified MacVicar clearly as not only a confessionalist but also an evangelical. W.D. made them his own but he also added a fourth which would tilt him toward fundamentalism. In 1903 W.D. stated, “I have held [premillenialism] strongly for some time.”10 It is not sure when he became a premillenialist. It was not the influence of MacVicar who, in keeping with most Reformed theologians, was an amillenialist. Amillenialists believed when the Bible spoke of a millennium it referred to the time between the first and second coming of Christ, not a future event and they did not get caught up in what they dismissed as fatuous speculation based on far-fetched Biblical interpretation. Eschatology – the doctrine of the last things, the end of the age – was at the turn of the twentieth century a major preoccupation of many evangelicals. The belief that Jesus would establish, on his return, a thousand-year rule on earth became a litmus test of whether you were truly committed to the fundamentals of the faith. Premillenialism – particularly the dispensational variety – was a new concept to Calvinists and was alien to the Reformed faith. It was first introduced to Canadian Presbyterians by the American Henry Martyn Parsons, minister of Toronto’s Knox Church from 1880 to 1901.11 W.D.’s son Stanford would inherit from his father the three pillars of MacVicar’s theology – the plenary inspiration of the Bible, the vicarious atonement of Christ and the person and work of the Holy Spirit. But in eschatology he followed MacVicar, not his father, dissociating himself from premillenialism, and becoming a staunch amillenialist. In doing so he distanced himself from fundamentalism and all that premillenialism brought with it, accepting an active engagement with contemporary culture to establish the kingdom of God here on earth rather than a pious withdrawal from it in anticipation of an imminent return of Jesus to set up a kingdom for which Christians had no responsibility other than saving souls.

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At the end of his first year at Presbyterian College Montreal, 1890, Reid needed employment. Hesitantly, he applied to the Presbyterian Church in Canada for a summer mission field. The morning after he had submitted his application, after a sleepless night, he asked for it to be returned. He was told that it had already been posted. Still, as an arts student, he knew he had little chance of acceptance. But when the list of appointees was put up on the board a few days later, to his “amazement and horror” he discovered that he had been posted to an important three-point pastoral charge near Owen Sound, Ontario. Quickly Reid managed an exchange and accepted a posting to two small anglophone Quebec villages, Avoca and Harrington. W.D. was informed that the congregation consisted of “exceedingly nice people, mostly Highlanders, with a sprinkle of North of Ireland Presbyterians.” His two summers there established patterns of ministry that endured for two generations and set not only him but also his son on course. His diffidence as he came to his first Sunday’s service was in marked contrast to the later confidence he projected. The Reids were like that: insecurities lurked below the surface but were rarely admitted. His immediate challenge was weekly sermon preparation. A set of Matthew Henry’s commentaries, sold him on credit by Stanley Church elder and bookseller William Drysdale, became his mainstay in preparation and secured his homiletic style of Bible exposition. His first sermon developed a theme for subsequent ministry: “Now are we ambassadors for Christ” (II Corinthians 5:29). For the next forty-seven years, he would meticulously record, on his carefully filed sermon notes, details about the occasion on which the message was preached and how many attended. Fifty years later, he leafed back to that sermon and reported from a notation on it that there were “15 present in the morning” in Avoca Church, and, after a treacherous crossing of the Rouge River, six in the afternoon at “the Maskilunge Schoolhouse.” His son would follow the exact same procedure, though Stanford Reid destroyed all his father’s available sermons when W.D. died.12 That first Sunday he made a resolution: he would never bring his notes into the pulpit. “My ideal in delivering a sermon,” he later explained, “has always been for the preacher to stand straight up and look his congregation squarely in the eye, and say what he has to say, with all the power that God gives him.” Like father, like son: Stanford Reid never brought a note into the pulpit in all his fifty-plus years of preaching. In his ministry Stanford Reid would maintain a pattern of systematic annual pastoral visitation learned from his father. That summer in Avoca and Harrington W.D. set about to visit all the homes in the

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community, Presbyterian or not. “Methodists, Anglicans, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Presbyterians – from all I received a most hearty welcome.” In old age he would say that “I have systematically followed the plan of regular visits to all homes once or twice a year. It pays.” In spite of his no-nonsense exterior, W.D., having come up the hard way, was warmly pastoral and demonstrated deep compassion. “During my long ministry, many a night’s sleep has been lost because of ‘the sorrows of others casting their shadows over me.’” Unlike many fellow students at the time, he saw the ministry not as a profession but as a calling: “I began to feel the burden of responsibility weighing more heavily upon me day by day.” Racked by selfdoubt that first summer, he began to question whether his place “was in the ministry after all.” Then, although “never emotional nor mystical,” he distinctly heard a voice in the darkness. “Go right on, I will be with thee for I have much people in this place.” The word left an indelible impression: “It seemed as if I were in the very presence of the Master Himself. A strange joy and exhilaration took hold of me and I made a new dedication of my life to Him and to His service. Never have I had such an experience either before or since, but the influence of it remains with me to this day.” W.D.’s second summer in Avoca and Harrington witnessed an unusual and unforgettable phenomenon not exceptional elsewhere but seldom seen in Canada. “The Revival,” as it became known, broke out in his two churches. The experience created an expectation for congregational life that would be a continuing prayer of his for every church he subsequently served. Reports of what happened in the summer of 1890, handed down to his son, also made Stanford Reid long for a similar visitation for the Presbyterian Church in Canada. As a Reformation scholar, Stanford frequently described what happened in the sixteenth century as a “radical renewal of the Church.” Toward the end of his life, he would write passionately: “God still is sovereign ... Christ is still King ... as He brought renewal and revival to the Church in the past, so He can and in His own good time will, bring revival and reformation to the contemporary Church.”13 Stanford Reid’s pessimism about the future of the Presbyterian Church in Canada as he grew older was tempered by the hopeful prayer that God could do again for the church at large what God had done in his father’s ministry in the summer of 1890 in Avoca and Harrington. “The Revival” started in a quiet way. In August, W.D. invited a friend, a June graduate of the College, to conduct a week of special meetings. The first evening there was no response. True to his pastoral approach, W.D. went out calling the next day to find out why. As he went door to door, a member admitted to him that he held “a terrible

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grudge” against another man in the church. He admitted “that is why God could not work last night.” Reid persuaded him to state publicly at the start of the second service that he had forgiven the man who had wronged him. The effect on the small community was immediate. The service that night concluded with an invitation: “If there is anyone here who would like to be saved, will you hold up your hand?” The stirring in the congregation was too much for “a real old-time Presbyterian elder,” who shot back: “There are lots here who want to be saved, but they don’t believe in doing it that way. We are Presbyterian here, and that is only a Methodist trick.” But the response was instantaneous and lasting. At the communion service at the end of the summer, some sixty-five new members joined the two small congregations. “I have had many experiences in religious work,” Reid later reminisced, “but never have I seen the Spirit of God work as it did during those three weeks of meetings at Avoca and Harrington. It seemed as if the windows of Heaven were opened and the Holy Spirit poured out on both congregations.” “The Revival” made W.D. a man known for bringing life to dying causes. In January 1891 he was asked to rescue a mission that prestigious downtown St Paul’s Church had established twenty years earlier in a poor area of Montreal squeezed between the Victoria Bridge, the St Lawrence River, and the Lachine Canal. His work was so successful that the church was formally constituted as an independent congregation. During his six years in the Victoria Church, half as a theological student, half as an ordained minister, the church grew to 300 members. In spite of flattering calls to more prestigious pulpits on graduation from Presbyterian College he stayed with his parish in “the Goose Village.” On 3 June 1893, at the age of twenty-eight, W.D. Reid was ordained by the Presbytery of Montreal. He had put himself through arts and theology while pastoring effectively. It was an impressive achievement for a farm boy who had started with nothing but discipline and faith. At Victoria Church, a significant friendship developed between W.D. and a fellow student at Presbyterian College whom he had invited to come and help share the work. During the winter of 1891 George Pidgeon and W.D. Reid took services alternately and then rotated during the summer to give each an opportunity to go home and help on the family farm. At Victoria Church, George Pidgeon met his wife, Helen Ball. His younger brother Leslie was W.D.’s brother Andrew’s roommate at Morrin College, Quebec. The Reids and the Pidgeons had much in common: both families were rural anglophone Quebeckers, both came from the Free Church side of the 1875 merger of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and both sets of brothers came to McGill

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Brothers W.D. and Andrew Reid, students at Presbyterian College, Montreal, c. 1892 (courtesy Joy Nugent)

following studies at Morrin College. Their close friendship was a significant relationship that would have unforeseen consequences during the Church Union controversy. Presbyterian College during W.D. Reid’s time was going through profound theological change. His response to these new currents would mark him and affect his son, bringing out the Reids’ natural combativeness. When W.D. was a student at Presbyterian College Montreal, there were four on the faculty.14 Principal Donald Harvey MacVicar taught systematic theology and expected students to return his notes to him verbatim in examinations. John Scrimger was more Socratic in his teaching of the New Testament. Scrimger was also more open to “higher” or textual criticism of the Bible than MacVicar, something that was only apparent after he was appointed principal in 1909. Daniel Coussirat, a Huguenot, had been brought from France to train clergy for French-Canadian evangelization. When enthusiasm waned for this project, he branched into Old Testament studies and became an instructor in Hebrew. His theology has been analysed as “a melange of

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evangelicalism and modernism.”15 The views of the professor of church history and apologetics, John Campbell, the fourth member of the faculty, led to the last heresy trial in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. On 26 February 1893, John Campbell delivered a lecture to Queen’s University theological students entitled “Perfect Father or the Perfect Book?” He declared that Biblical passages that spoke of God as vengeful or unloving were imperfectly inspired, advancing the concept of “gradual revelation.” In September, shortly after W.D.’s ordination, the Presbytery of Montreal launched a heresy trial with colleagues Principal MacVicar and Professor Scrimger as prime accusers. The charge was upheld. Only three voted to exonerate Campbell, among them, surprisingly (in the light of his later reputation as a heresy hunter), W.D. himself. He obviously held Campbell in great personal affection as “a sensitive, high-strung Highlander ... much beloved by his students.”16 The charge of heresy was subsequently thrown out, on appeal, by the next higher legislative body in the denomination, the Synod of Montreal and Ottawa. Reid attended the two-day synod debate and, at the time, indicated his pleasure that Campbell was restored to the post from which he had been suspended for the year. In later life W.D. was known as a controversialist. He invited to his pulpit separatist T.T. Shields of Jarvis Street Baptist Church, Toronto and was happy to welcome revivalist evangelist John McNeill, a denominational gadfly, into his pulpit. W.D. was a fighter for orthodoxy, outspoken and at times combative. In the 1930s, one irate professor at Presbyterian College, whose orthodoxy he had challenged, would write: “I should like to advise you personally, however, to look very narrowly at anything that comes from W.D. Reid. Dr Reid was telling preposterous lies about my own teaching,”17 W.D.’s increasing concern about new theological trends in the Presbyterian Church in Canada in the 1890s was strengthened by a year spent in Scotland. In the summer of 1896, W.D. resigned from Victoria Church, sailed for Liverpool, and travelled on to Edinburgh and enrolled for the autumn session at Free Church College, which was then becoming known for its advocacy of German Biblical studies. There he audited lectures from two professors: Andrew Bruce Davidson in Old Testament and Marcus Dods in New Testament. Davidson was a compelling and magnetic teacher who made German Biblical critical studies attractive to two generations of Free Church ministers. Dods, equally winsome, had recently jettisoned earlier traditional views on Biblical inspiration. His appointment as a Free Church professor in 1889 and the collapse of his heresy trial in the 1890 General Assembly, signalled an ideological shift in the denomination.

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As inheritors of Scottish Free Church traditions, Canadian Presbyterians were profoundly impacted by Davidson and Dods. W.D. characterized Davidson as an “Evangelical Modernist” and Dods as simply “Modernistic.” He left Edinburgh at the end of 1896 recommitted to the old Biblical orthodoxies. In January of 1897 he arrived in Glasgow to discover if the instruction there was more sympathetic. Here he attended lectures given by two professors well known for their adherence to historic creedal Christianity, James Orr and James Denney. Orr, at the United Presbyterian College, was an articulate and unequivocal opponent of German critics Adolf Harnack and Albrecht Ritschl. Denney, just inducted as professor of systematic theology at Glasgow’s Free Church College, was warmly expository, Christ-centred, and insistently evangelistic. W.D. noted approvingly of Denney that “many a bewildered student was stabilized and given peace through Professor Denney’s lectures.” W.D.’s studies abroad needed one final component: the practical. He turned from the academic to spend three months at Cowcaddens Free Church in Glasgow, a unique and innovative congregation. Its minister, William Ross,18 had developed new patterns of church life that were program-oriented as well as pulpit-centred. Ross saw the church as a place for evangelistic outreach, its building put to daily use. He has been described as “conservative in doctrine, progressive in worship and a radical Liberal in politics.”19 Ross invited W.D. to come to Cowcaddens as a locum while he was in South Africa for three months. Cowcaddens Church represented a style of ministry different from anything he had seen in Canada. The three months there went quickly. He was so much appreciated there that three years later, back in Canada, he recalled receiving a flattering call to succeed Ross.20 By that time, however, he was happily settled in a Canadian church. Leaving Glasgow, W.D. travelled to Palestine, an experience that coloured his subsequent preaching with vivid personal allusions to Biblical scenes. On returning to North America, he spent a winter in Boston, receiving a master’s degree from Harvard University. His two years completed, with new perspectives on theological currents and parish innovation, W.D. accepted a call to Taylor Church in east end Montreal, a congregation that was in desperate straits. Through lessons learned in Cowcaddens, he quickly turned things around. His time in Scotland had also enabled him to identify with the skilled craftsmen who had recently been recruited by the Canadian Pacific Railway to work in the nearby Angus Shops and who lived in the neighbourhood. During his ten years at Taylor Church, W.D. gained a reputation as the defender of the working man and a crusader against social injustice.

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It was the Kootenay Campaign of 1909 that reshaped W.D. Reid’s ministry. The rapid settlement of the West had challenged the Presbyterian Church in Canada to rethink its concept of evangelism. The previous year, the Presbytery of the Kootenays in eastern British Columbia had asked the newly formed Board of Evangelism of the denomination to assist them in addressing “religious indifference, and want of interest in the higher concerns of man’s moral and spiritual life, a kind of chill in which it was difficult to do earnest work.” During April and May of 1909 teams covered the whole presbytery, travelling from east to north and west. The ablest ministers of the denomination were recruited to conduct campaigns. W.D. Reid agreed to take a leave of absence from Taylor Church. Professor T.B. Kilpatrick of Knox College, who volunteered, later wrote: “It is worth noting that the preaching which did the work was strong, virile, intellectual, ethical, doctrinal, with a singular absence of any of the tricks of style which have, unfortunately, too often been associated with evangelistic preaching.”21 W.D. Reid’s adaptability in making the cultural shift from east end Montreal to the frontier ministry in the Kootenays was remarkable. It gave him a missionary vision. He accepted the call of the church to become the Superintendent of Missions for the province of Alberta. “The Kootenay Campaign became a model and a benchmark for other Presbyterian evangelistic campaigns over the next fifteen years.”22 Most of those involved in the Kootenay Campaign and subsequent evangelistic efforts entered the United Church in Canada in 1925, when the momentum that had been achieved was dissipated. W.D.’s son would spend a lifetime trying to recover it for the Presbyterian Church in Canada. W.D.’s three years in Alberta were marked by fearless courage, great vigour, and a large vision.23 The number of Presbyterian mission charges grew from 110 to 166. He helped open the West to the church and provided pastoral support for many young ministers. As superintendent he was a keen observer of church life. “In most places, I found the success or failure of the field depended almost entirely on the man on the job and the Gospel which he preached. If he had lots of energy, a good share of common sense, and an Evangelical message, all was well. If he was one of the clever Modernists, throwing out great piles of the Scripture as forgeries, fairy tales, and folk lore, etc., nothing was accomplished, and the people forsook the services and no salary was forthcoming.”24 W.D. was constantly on the move, but his years as an itinerant bachelor were about to end. “Life on the road as a superintendent gave him a taste for domesticity,” his son would later comment. W.D. takes up

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the story: “On an evening in 1910 in a town where I was a stranger, with nothing to do, I noticed in the local paper that a Miss Daisy Stanford, a returned missionary from India, was to give an address on ‘Mission Work in India,’ illustrated with lantern slides. I strolled around to the church, but, being a little late, the lights were out and she was already giving her lecture with her slides thrown on the screen. I noted she had a nicely-modulated voice and a good sense of humour that ever and anon lighted up the address. She also sang in a fine contralto voice one of the Maharati hymns. She spoke easily, simply, clearly and naturally. All this rather intrigued me. After the lecture was over, I went forward to congratulate her on her address. She was talking to some ladies, and I waited. Suddenly she turned around and, with a smile, said, ‘Hello, Mr Reid.’”25 Daisy had previously been shown W.D.’s photo, and apparently the unmistakable Reid facial features had been lodged in her memory. It appears to have been love almost at first sight. Daisy had captured the heart of forty-five-year-old bachelor W.D. Reid. Daisy Stanford, like W.D., was self-made and self-taught, and known for her strong individuality and upbeat personality. Born in 1878 outside the West Sussex market town of Storrington in England, she was one of nine children of Reuben and Fanny Stanford.26 In the 1881 census enumeration her father is described both as “house decorator” and “evangelist,” and the family’s home is listed as the Mission Hall, Cootham, a small grouping of substandard homes in a bog west of Storrington. The Mission Hall was one of the maligned “tin tabernacles” built in Victorian England to serve those who were marginalized both denominationally and economically. Reuben Stanford appears to have been a man with a mission. Cootham was close to the entrance to Parham House, an impressive Elizabethan manor with vast grounds that for over 300 years was in the possession of the Bysshops family, whose head took the title Lord Zouche. Reuben Stanford first comes to public notice in 1872, when he gave great offence to the fifteenth Lord Zouche for promoting millennial doctrine “contrary to the teaching of the Established Church.” Lord Zouche complained to the rector of Storrington that one of his maids had resigned from his service “on account of some confusion of ideas about the Millennium which Mr Stamford [sic] has put into her head, and her father, a very good man I believe, is much grieved about it.”27 To add insult to injury, the Cootham barn on his property had been used as the site for the propagation of these insidious doctrines. A man named Ned Wright, a travelling millennial enthusiast, was coming to preach there that very week. “I do not know the law but I doubt

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Cootham Mission Hall, Storrington, West Sussex, c. 1880 (courtesy Helen Whittle, Storrington and District Museum, uk)

whether Mr Stamford [sic] has any right to lend my barn to itinerant preachers, neither do I suppose that the Almighty has given any particular revelation to him about the Millennium which has not been accorded to the most learned and best educated divines of any Christian Church.” Lord Zouche sought to remedy the situation by erecting a local chapel of ease. This did not appear to lessen the appeal of the millenialists. The rival Cootham Mission Hall, just down the lane and built in 1875, remained a magnet for villagers. The Hall, though small and damp, was an idyllic place to grow up. Children loved the grounds, coming to pick apples in the autumn and attending the popular Sunday School. Stanford Reid’s mother had a childhood filled with sunlight, fun, and laughter. Though poor, the large family was close and shared a fervent religious and millennial faith. As in Canada, mid- and late Victorian England was full of intense millennial speculation among evangelical Christians. Here the influence of John Nelson Darby, a former Church of Ireland curate who had left the church in the 1830s, seemed pervasive. He provided an exciting, if not theatrical, interpretation of “the end times” in scripture, encouraged by his disdain for conventional clergy and establishment ecclesiology.28 Darby’s millennial views were a pastiche

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of interpretations of the Old Testament Book of Daniel with its seventy weeks and the New Testament Book of Revelation, particularly its millennial reign of Christ in chapter 19. At prophetic conferences, these views were expounded with dramatic charts and appeals to be found ready and waiting for the inevitable. The rallies would end with a plea for missionary volunteers to hasten the coming of Christ and the millennium based on an interpretation of Jesus’ words: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached to all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”29 The millennial and the missionary appeal were seen as one.30 Milleniallist Reuben Stanford inculcated in his family, and particularly his seven daughters, a commitment to overseas missions. For at least three of them it would shape the course of the rest of their lives. One by one the Stanford sisters dedicated themselves as missionary conscripts hastening the return of Jesus. To this calling they brought zeal and verve, with natural ability and flair. Adventuresome, lively, and independent, each was a self-starter. Nothing could hold them back from their task — certainly not the male prejudices of their time. The missionary movement was the one place where women could take an active role in leadership and ministry. Creative, tirelessly energetic, they would make their mark. The oldest of the nine children, Minnie, or May as she was later known, born in 1867, was the first to leave. She travelled out to Africa and there met the legendary Matabele Wilson, who had gone to South Africa to make his fortune in 1881. Wilson had cast in his lot with Cecil Rhodes. His long life — he died in 1960 at the age of ninety-nine — would span almost a century of colonial history. Their daughter Mabel met and married a Scottish farmer with a distinguished First World War naval career who had gone to Bechuanaland (now Botswana) in 1923. The Honourable Archibald John Morton Stuart was called home in 1943, on the death of his brother, to be the nineteenth Earl of Moray. The family took up residence in the ancestral seat of Darnaway Castle in Moray. It would be one branch of the Stanford family that W. Stanford Reid would later cultivate. Another of the seven sisters, Rose,31 born in 1875, was hired as a nanny by silk merchant Henry Moll of Milan, Italy. His first wife’s death left him with four motherless children, and he then married the nanny who was caring for them. Rose presented him with four children. One of her three sons, Albert Edward (Bertie), travelled to Montreal, perhaps because his aunt lived there, graduated as a doctor from McGill, and become a psychiatrist. He went on to be professor of psychiatry at McGill Medical School and chief psychiatrist at the Montreal General Hospital. Rose’s youngest son, Tom, also settled in

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Canada, while the daughter, Eva, made a fortune in haute couture as a designer of sandals and maintained a Fifth Avenue apartment as well as homes in Rome, near the Tivoli, and Switzerland. The youngest of the Stanford sisters, Violet, born in 1883, was a career missionary in India. A trained nurse, she was sent by the British Baptist Zenana Mission to the Berhampur Mission Hospital in Orissa in 1906. While in India, she met and married Lewis Bevan Jones, a pioneer in Christian Islamic studies. In 1930 Lewis became first principal of the Henry Martyn School of Islamic Studies in Lahore in the Punjab. There Violet gathered material on Muslim women and coauthored with her husband the groundbreaking Women in Islam.32 Daisy Fanny Stanford was equally remarkable. At the age of twentythree, she applied to the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission for service in India. The Mission’s Candidates Sub-Committee was dubious and turned her down because of “want of funds.” She was told she might later be accepted “if she be willing to wait indefinitely.” After repeated entreaties and an interview by a member of the committee, the committee reluctantly “recommend[ed] her for acceptance as an associate worker.” Her passage to India was “conditional on the funds being forthcoming for passage outfit and her support for at least one year promised.”33 Daisy took little more than three months to raise the required finances. At a board meeting on 7 October 1903, it was reported that not only had Miss Stanford collected the money she needed but that her passage was booked two days later. She was assigned to Nasik, eighty miles east of Bombay, for Marathi work.34After six years in India, she qualified for furlough in England. Returning home, she received a pressing assignment: go out to Canada to raise funds for a new hospital in Nasik. A Hindu lady had given property to carry on a medical ministry specifically for women. Further property had been bought, money raised in England for half the cost, and now Canada was being challenged to come up with the balance, Canadian $10,000. So far only $2,500 had been received. As a proven fund-raiser, Daisy Stanford was pressed into service. She already had an English friend in Canada, a Miss McKinney, who had been an original sponsor. McKinney was now deputation secretary of the Canadian affiliate of the mission founded in 1903. McKinney would be waiting for her at the dock in Montreal, provide contacts and help her adapt to Canadian ways. Daisy set sail in the autumn of 1909, but when she arrived in Montreal, no one was there to greet her. McKinney, she was told later, had returned to England “owing to impaired health.” Never daunted by the unexpected, Daisy set about to track down names and launch her appeal. The Zenana Mission’s Toronto directors

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marvelled at her initiative. In the minutes for 22 October 1909, they note that “Miss Stanford, who is in Montreal holding meetings, and asking for subscriptions for the Nasik Hospital, seems filled with the desire to do the Lord’s work no matter what discouragements prevail and her letter wafts a message to us to never be disheartened but to go forward in faith and hope in every branch of our work.”35 The following month the board extended an invitation to Daisy to come to Toronto, where, she was assured, she would be “warmly welcomed” because “Miss Stanford’s letters from Montreal were much enjoyed and appreciated.”36 Toronto Zenana Board members were drawn from the city’s social elite, worthy women committed to the religious, social, and medical advancement of their sisters in India. India was a “heathen” part of the British Empire, and as fellow beneficiaries of its power, the board members had responsibilities as enlightened Christians. The 1910 annual meeting, at which Daisy Stanford was now invited to speak, would be held at Government House to accommodate the expected crowd. That meeting was a huge success and Daisy became the darling of the board. She was despatched to many small Ontario towns, where she spoke in “schools, colleges and church parlours as well as a large drawing room.” The Zenana Board became alarmed at her full schedule: “she has been leading an extremely busy life and we know that her efforts have not been in vain.”37 With this caution, they sent her off for a trip west with a party at the home of the president of the Zenana Board on 30 April 1910, even though Daisy had been warned by Mr Cavalier, the British treasurer, that she would be wasting her time in travelling to British Columbia as opposition had been expressed to sending anyone from England. The board sniffed: “Miss Stanford being in Canada for six months has become thoroughly conversant with Canadian ways and it was thought she would be the most desirable representative for the Mission as she is so well informed.”38 She justified their confidence; in the autumn of 1910 she made her way across the prairies. Fort William and Port Arthur, Kenora, Winnipeg, Brandon, Lethbridge, all recorded triumphant sessions with Daisy Stanford, and then to Calgary where she first encountered W.D. Reid. She returned to Toronto with an impressive report, as recorded in the minutes of the Zenana Board: “Miss Stanford in reviewing the year’s accomplishment spoke of 34 places visited throughout the Dominion, 209 visits paid, 227 meetings held travelling in all about 8,828 miles.”39 In her farewell address, referring to the 285 addresses given during the eighteen-month tour, she reminded those present of “the three phrases of the Mission — namely Zenana, Bible and Medical.”

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Daisy Stanford and W.D. Reid on their wedding day, 31 July 1912 (courtesy Dr E.A. Stewart Reid)

When she embarked for England in March 1911, Daisy was no longer alone at the pier. W.D. Reid had arranged a fortuitous visit to Montreal for a meeting of the Home Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He now planned an Atlantic crossing that would combine work and courtship. In the summer of 1911 W.D. travelled to Scotland to recruit young ministers for service on the Canadian frontier. Business completed, he proceeded south to Keswick in the English Lakes. Keswick was the site of a large interdenominational religious convention and Daisy was a speaker at the annual Missionary

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Day. There he proposed, Daisy accepted, and he returned to Canada committed to marriage. The following summer, on 31 July 1912, in the Baptist Chapel on London Road in Redhill, near Reigate, in Surrey, William Dunn Reid, described as “bachelor and Presbyterian minister, 45 years of age,” married Daisy Fanny Stanford, “spinster,” profession blank and thirtythree years of age. The address for both is given as The Homestead, Redhill. Daisy’s parents had left Cootham in 190140 and Reuben had entered into a partnership with her brother Albert to set up the firm R. Stanford and Son, Builders and Decorators at The Homestead, 15 Linkfield Street, Redhill, Surrey. The wedding ceremony was conducted, as the license stated, “according to the rites and ceremonies of the Presbyterian Baptists.” The officiant, Humphrey Chalmers,41 was a Scotsman who at sixteen had changed his allegiance from Presbyterianism to the Baptist faith, “through reading the New Testament with his mother.” Hence the hybrid liturgy. Two Canadians, both Presbyterian ministers, signed the marriage register. W.D.’s best man was the 1912 moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Donald G. McQueen. McQueen’s church, First Presbyterian in Edmonton, had been dedicated earlier that year in time to host the Assembly. McQueen, a pioneer minister in western Canada, spent half a century as minister in Edmonton, watching it grow from stockade trading post to provincial capital. He had been a key player in W.D.’s work as Alberta missions superintendent. McQueen was in Britain to visit as moderator the Scottish General Assemblies, and his presence at the wedding showed the respect that W.D. enjoyed as well as their close friendship. McQueen proved to be a formidable opponent of Church Union, one of a very small group of western clergy. Charles W. Shelley, the other Canadian signatory was a young protégé of W.D.’s at Taylor Church, who had been recently ordained.42 The newlyweds sailed almost immediately to Montreal on their honeymoon. They would return to Britain only once, in 1924. For Daisy one life had ended, and another was about to begin. It was the commencement of twenty-five years of unique partnership in ministry. After Daisy’s death in 1938 W.D. wrote: “No minister ever had a more wonderful helpmeet. She had a particularly bright, happy disposition. She would get up in the morning singing, and go to bed at night the same way. She had a fine sense of humour, and often the house rang with laughter. She was most charitable in her outlook upon other people, never could she be found criticizing anyone. She had a most wonderfully simple faith in God, and consulted Him in everything. She

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often put me to shame with her simple faith, when I was bothered with doubts and difficulties.” The union of Daisy Stanford and W.D. Reid brought together two distinct yet interconnected strands of Protestant evangelicalism. Daisy’s was the simple, earnest, millennial faith of the missionary. Her gifts were organizing, promoting, and administering. Her missionary career provided her with leadership opportunities that as a woman in that era she would not otherwise have had. W.D. was likewise a self-starter, vigorous, articulate, mercurial, and fearless. His faith was more considered and theologically defined, but he could be warm and (at times) impulsive. Shrewd and discerning, his year in Scotland had nurtured a confidence in the old orthodoxies. Though challenged, indeed because it had been challenged, that faith was strong and vibrant. Out of this happy, creative union came two sons: William Stanford Reid, born in 1913, and, four years later, his brother, Ernest Allan Stewart Reid. The firstborn followed in his father’s wake. Stewart, as the second was known, was very much his mother’s child, reflecting her sensitive and compassionate insight into human nature in his work as medical diagnostician and master clinician. Both made their mark. Stanford and Stewart Reid came from a secure home, a privileged community, exceptional parents, and a heritage of discipline, hard work, and achievement.

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2 Growing Up Privileged and Presbyterian, 1913–1935 Westmount and McGill Between the Wars

On 13 September 1913, at 619 Victoria Avenue in the prosperous Montreal suburb of Westmount, William Stanford Reid was born. At the ages of thirty-five and forty-eight his mother and father were late to settle into parenthood and domesticity. Daisy, who contributed the “Stanford” by which he would always be known, had given up travel and a missionary career. W.D., to whom Stanford was indebted for the “William” in his name, had given up an itinerant career as Alberta missions superintendent to accept a call to Stanley Street Presbyterian Church just prior to his marriage. Stanley Street Church members had been persistent in their appeal to W.D. Reid. For two years they had implored him to come to take up the challenge of a declining congregation in the inner city. The church was located behind the Windsor Hotel within blocks of six other Presbyterian congregations. When the recently married couple began their ministry on the second Sunday of September 1912, W.D.’s view from the pulpit was not encouraging: “a family here and there through a well-nigh empty church.” Daisy immediately started a Bible class for young women and W.D. began visiting all the families on the parish roll. The church had its origin in 1874 when Sir William Dawson, a geologist and principal of McGill University from 1855 to 1893, stormed out of Erskine Church. Dawson accused the minister of having surreptitiously introduced an organ “to lead the praise of the Sabbath services.” An organ, according to Dawson and many other Presbyterians of his day, was contrary to the clear teaching of the Word of God,

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which forbade such innovations. Only a precentor could be allowed to lead the congregation in praise, and only psalms could be sung. An organ was only, as one Scot said, using the vernacular, a “kist o’whistles.” Dawson and his friends set about to establish a new congregation more in keeping with their strict views of worship and theology.1 Toward the end of his life, Stanford Reid researched Sir William Dawson, perhaps looking back on one of the seminal influences of his life through his father and the church in which his faith was nurtured. He wrote: “He was a strong Calvinist, and a convinced believer in the inspiration and authority of the Bible as the Word of God.”2 The new congregation built a church – without organ – on Stanley Street. The Stanley Street Presbyterian Church carved out a distinct niche for itself among the many Presbyterian churches in the area as a bastion of a confessional orthodoxy with a conservative approach to innovation and experimentation. To this the Rev. Findlay Dewey, minister from 1886 to 1910, added a warm and devotional piety. During the quarter of a century of Dewey’s ministry, the neighbourhood around the church changed drastically. It became apparent to W.D. that the congregation would have to relocate if it wanted to survive. In May of 1913 the old building was sold for the princely sum of $130,000. The burgeoning anglophone suburb of Westmount was chosen as a future site and lots were bought at the corner of Westmount Boulevard and Victoria Avenue. During the time of construction, the congregation, whose name was now abbreviated to Stanley Presbyterian Church, held services in the Roslyn School Hall near the site. It was there that Stanford Reid was baptized on 7 December 1913. A child is born, a church is being built. Architects designed a striking Byzantine edifice, patterned after the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The completed sanctuary was consecrated the first Sunday of October in the fateful year 1914. The heady days of pre-war Canadian expansion and prosperity were over. The Dominion had been drawn into a European conflict and was coming to the aid of the Mother Country. At the service of dedication W.D. Reid’s friend, Scots evangelist John McNeill (then minister at Cooke’s Church, Toronto), sounded an ominous note. The next day the newspaper reported that “The congregation, worshipping in the building for the first time, admired the structure, but any tendency to feel proud concerning their works was warned again by Mr McNeill, who preached of pride in one’s accomplishments. His sermon, ‘The Pharisee and the Publican,’ cautioned those present not to raise their hands in horror at the thought of the Publican who collected taxes for the Romans. He merely made money, a little at the expense of his patriotism, a little at the expense of his good name, and a little at the expense of his conscience. He was a

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business man who would have been called ‘Smart’ if he had been a member of the Montreal Stock Exchange.” As pastor, W.D. would be called out to homes in the congregation at any time of day or night when the boy on the Western Union bicycle delivered the “We regret to inform you” death notice from the War Department in Ottawa. A son, brother, or husband had been killed and W.D. would have prayer with the family and later conduct a memorial service. W.D. had his own wartime anxiety: brother Andrew had volunteered for chaplaincy duty in 1916 and was posted to the No. 1 Casualty Clearing Station in France. At the end of the war, Andrew was chaplain at the Beaver Hut, the Canadian ymca shelter on the Strand in London. After being demobbed, he had a short and unhappy pastorate at Grace Church, Calgary. Then he moved on to Knox, Edmonton, as he and his brother went separate ways over Church Union, with Andrew following his longtime friend and former college roommate Leslie Pidgeon. Despite the war – or perhaps because of the spiritual vacuum it created – membership in Stanley Church rose steadily. At the 1 May 1917 communion 233 participated out of a membership of 385. A second son, Ernest Andrew Stewart Reid, was born to W.D. and Daisy on 29 June 1917, just as the allies on the Western Front, joined by American dough-boys, were readying themselves for the Third Battle of Ypres. On the declaration of the Armistice, many demobilized veterans decided to enter the ministry as mature students, and W.D. was invited to teach a course of study at Presbyterian College in pastoral theology. The Stanley Church elders were unanimous in giving him permission: “Session is proud to learn that our pastor has been chosen.”3 In 1920 the college awarded him a doctorate of divinity for his services. W.D. was highly visible in many different organizations.4 That year he was moderator of the Synod of Montreal and Ottawa. He was also three times president of the Montreal Protestant Ministerial Association and twice president of the Presbyterian Montreal Ministerial Association. W.D. was also busy as an author. Some of his publications, such as The Gospel of the Second Mile, were printed sermons. Other writing was polemic. The Atonement defended the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross. Another raised the question Is the Book of Jonah Mythical, Parabolical or Historical? The title of a third pamphlet expressed his views unequivocally: Evolution Weighed in the Balance and Found Wanting – this in spite of the fact that, as his son would later demonstrate,5 Sir William Dawson, founder of Stanley Church and guardian of orthodoxy, could see no incompatibility between evolution and the Christian faith.

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Stanford Reid, age eight, at the grave of his grandmother, Candlish Church, Kinnear’s Mills, qc (courtesy Joy Nugent)

There is no question that after his studies abroad, but especially following marriage to Daisy Stanford, W.D. became increasingly aggressive in his defence of the faith as he understood it. Friendship with maverick evangelist John McNeill,6 cordial relations with firebrand preacher T.T. Shields,7 and close ties with J. Gresham Machen,8 then of Princeton Theological Seminary, were all factors. The Reids were by nature confrontational and controversial, but W.D. Reid’s identification with fundamentalism and (after marriage) his espousal of the “temperance” cause (i.e., total abstinence from alcoholic beverages) were not in the cultural mainstream of Canadian Presbyterianism nor wholly compatible with his Scots identity.

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Stanford Reid was sent to the local Roslyn School where he had been baptized. He entered in 1918 in the midst of the terrible influenza outbreak. His parents, both of them from working-class backgrounds, chose public education rather than the private schools preferred by many Westmount families. But Stanford, even as a child, could be a snob, particularly when he went out to visit country cousins in Leeds during the summer. They remember him dressed in a ubiquitous sailor outfit (later his Sea Cadet uniform) “swaggering around and swinging a stick.”9 They found him, to use their word, obnoxious. And he was pugnacious. To a nephew fighting academic injustice, he wrote fifty years later: “I led a revolt against a teacher when I was in Grade 4 at Roslyn School so you can see that we Reids start early!”10 Life in the Reid home in the early 1920s was dominated by one major issue: the Church Union controversy. Nothing would be more significant in Stanford Reid’s development. W.D. did his best to stay out of the deeply divisive controversy as to whether Presbyterians should join the Methodists and the much smaller Congregational church in a three-way merger, but neutrality eventually became an impossibility both for him and for Stanley Church. The subject was discussed as early as 1902, with country-wide votes taken in 1910 and again in 1915. Following the first vote, at the 1911 national General Assembly in Ottawa, W.D. Reid as a commissioner had spoken against a proposal that there be a federation of Canadian Protestant Churches instead of organic union. With his experience as Superintendent of Missions for the Synod of Alberta, he countered that such union churches already existed in many small Prairie communities and there was no need to submit such a proposal to the people.11 It was at the General Assembly of 1923 in Port Arthur that W.D. Reid was goaded into taking sides. When he made a passionate appeal for a gradualist approach to Union, Charles W. Gordon of Winnipeg rose and replied that “We will force you rebels in by an act of parliament, whether you like it or not.” Gordon, writer of best-selling saccharine novels that had defined Canadian Protestant piety for a generation,12 was better known by his pseudonym Ralph Connor. Well acquainted with W.D., he was particularly close to brother Andrew.13 When Gordon made that threat, it was a defining moment for W.D. “Dr Gordon obviously does not know his history,” his son remembers him stating. “This is what the Stewart monarch tried in Scotland three hundred years ago with disastrous results.” From that moment on, he identified with the anti-Unionists and made their cause his. During the summer of 1924, the Reid family travelled to the British Isles. They visited Daisy’s elderly father Reuben, now retired in Totnes

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in Devon. W.D. renewed contacts in Scotland among the continuing Free Church of Scotland, the non-concurrents in a 1900 Scottish merger. He wanted to learn more about their refusal to enter the United Free Church and to gauge their present state of health. When he returned to Canada, he found Unionists claiming that the Free Church of Scotland, as it then existed, consisted of derelict churches: “the hinges of their closed doors are rusted stiff; splendid memorial windows are boarded up and roofs let in the rain.”14 The inference was obvious: the stay-outers in Canada would enjoy a similar fate. W.D. challenged the statement, discovering that the information was from a book published in 1909.15 The post–1900 Free Church of Scotland, whose members were called “Wee Frees” (a nickname they did not appreciate), had experienced impressive growth. W.D., fresh from Scotland, contacted friends there and soon set the record straight in “The Wee Free Story.” The booklet was published by the Presbyterian Church Association. As happened in Scotland in 1900, there was great bitterness throughout the Church. Congregations polarized and communities were sundered. Families and friends parted ways. From their time at Presbyterian College, Montreal, back thirty years or more and from a common anglophone rural Quebec heritage, the careers of George and Leslie Pidgeon and the three Reid brothers had followed parallel tracks. Now the two Pidgeon brothers were leading the Presbyterian Church in Canada into organic union with the Methodists and Congregationalists. In 1916 – the year after he returned from Vancouver to pastor Bloor Street Church in Toronto – George Pidgeon became convener of the Home Missions Board. The following year, he was appointed to the executive of the General Assembly’s Committee on Church Union.16 A second vote on Church Union had been taken by Presbyterians in 1915. Two-thirds of the presbyteries – the legal requirement under the denomination’s Barrier Act – were in favour. Pidgeon regarded this outcome as a “moral commitment” (his biographer’s words) to the Methodist and Congregational churches. This sense of “moral obligation” would only grow during the ensuing debate.17 Leslie Pidgeon, minister of Augustine Church, Winnipeg, was working closely with his brother George. “There’s no fighting the Pidgeons,” it was said. “Leslie is too clever and George is too good.”18 Leslie was politically savvy and throughout 1924 advocated in parliament for legislation enabling church union. “It is difficult to imagine how the bill could have passed without his assistance”19 seemed the general consensus at the time. As W.D. campaigned vigorously against his erstwhile friend George Pidgeon, Andrew Reid was standing with his old roommate Leslie

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Pidgeon. For the rest of their lives, the two brothers would never again speak about the subject. The third and youngest Reid brother, Allan, was likewise being flushed out as to his views on Church Union. As clerk of the Montreal Presbytery, Allan was in a difficult situation. His sympathies had always been ecumenical. For eleven years following his ordination in 1907, he had served two churches in the Montreal Presbytery.20 He then became general secretary of the interdenominational Montreal Board of Christian Education. When he refused to respond to questions about his loyalties, a rival and more manageable presbytery clerk was appointed by the Unionists. For the following year, he and W.D., six foot four and six foot tall respectively, would scrum the alternate pro-Union clerk, outshouting him as edicts and ordination questions were read, and arguing over the minutes. Eleven-year-old Stanford Reid, in later recollection, would be “wideeyed and open-eared as a boy listening to the accounts of the tricks and manoeuvres in presbytery to circumvent the Unionists as the deadline of 10 June 1925 approached.”21 In Stanley Church it was open war.22 Session minutes record that “700 ballots of the Edmonton union form and type approved by the Presbyterian Church Association” had been ordered.23 In January 1925 the congregation voted overwhelmingly against entering the United Church of Canada. To W.D.’s “great distress” some long-time comrades (as he called them), former parishioners of his from Taylor Church, resigned. Most joined the Unionist St Andrew’s Church down the road. Anti-Union refugees from congregations voting for Union attached themselves to Stanley Church. The statistics tell the story: in December 1924 there were 348 receiving communion, but after Union, at the 21 June 1925 sacrament, that number had dropped to 288. It was a time of ecclesiastical musical chairs, or pews, across Canada. The rancour had a seriously negative impact on religious life. Some see the result of Union in the accelerating secularization of Canada. Many of the children of 1925 left organized Christianity and, it would appear from present statistics, so have most of their grandchildren.24 At the final General Assembly of the undivided church held 3 June 1925, George Pidgeon was elected moderator. A week later he was the first moderator of the United Church of Canada. At Toronto’s Mutual Street Arena that day, three streams came together in a single file. Andrew Dunn Reid, a commissioner from Edmonton, was among them. He was to move that summer to the flagship St Andrew’s Church, Sydney, Cape Breton. His two brothers from Montreal were not present. Indeed, there was not a single anti-Unionist commissioner from Montreal Presbytery, which is extraordinary when one remem-

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bers that Montreal was an epicentre of anti-Unionism in the country, a distinction it shared with Hamilton. Brother Allan immediately started to help rebuild new Presbyterian churches for minorities that had voted against Union. As the new superintendent for the Synod of Montreal and Ottawa, he laid a cornerstone a week during the years 1926 to 1929. Then came the Depression. The building came to an abrupt end. Heavily mortgaged congregations were financially strapped, unable to pay the interest, let alone retire the capital. Allan Reid soldiered on until 1952 as superintendent and clerk of the Montreal Presbytery.25 From the time Stanford became a member of the presbytery in 1941, the relationship between the two, nephew and uncle, both of whom were highly opinionated, was never straightforward – though, in a fight, Reids would always hang together. W.D. Reid now had to repair the ravages of Union on Stanley Church. With great energy (he was sixty at the time) he would call on every family once a year and go to the limits of his physical strength. His efforts were rewarded: Stanley Church surpassed its pre–1925 figures. In 1931 the congregation reached a peak of 800 members; 425 attended communion in March. Rebuilding Stanley Church exacted a severe physical toll on W.D. When he retired in 1937 at the age of seventy-one, he was already crippled with osteoarthritis. For most of the final fifteen years of his life he was incapacitated, in a wheelchair, and in constant pain.26 Church Union greatly impacted young Stanford Reid. The conflict gave him a lifelong distrust of anything he considered ecclesiastical intimidation. By instinct ever after he would be suspicious of the motives of ecclesiastical leaders, questioning of those in authority, wary of church politics, and passionately committed to the Reformation principle of liberty of conscience. He maintained a lifelong loyalty to the continuing Presbyterian Church cause, no matter how frustrated he might be with his church’s deficiencies – a loyalty that was not always reciprocated. The anti-Union cause made many peaceful people into belligerents. Stanford Reid was already a fighter by temperament. Now he had witnessed the worst kind of conflict, religious war, and it sharpened his instincts as a combatant. Opposition to Church Union was, in many cases, a lay-led movement. At Union a majority of clergy went into the United Church, leaving the ranks of clergy in the continuing church greatly depleted. Young men of Stanford Reid’s generation were continually challenged to enter the ministry. Honour rolls of those who went on to ordination were posted in their congregations. When he entered Westmount High School in the autumn of 1926, he joined a select group of fellow

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students who would, in subsequent years, provide a cadre of leadership in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Lyall Detlor, from Stanley Church, had a year left to graduate. Edward Hewlett Johnson, known as Ted, was two years ahead of him. Malcolm Ransom was in Reid’s class and entered McGill the same year. These men were all able and articulate, as their subsequent careers in the church would prove. Stanford Reid, though a good student, was also well-rounded: his sport, appropriately, was wrestling, and he joined the Sea Cadets. He graduated from Westmount High in 1930 with academic distinction. As with most from his class at Westmount, he went on to McGill, enrolling in the four-year honours English and history course. It was a difficult time to enter university. Job prospects were bleak. The stock market crash of 24 October 1929 meant nothing was secure or certain. At McGill’s 1931 spring convocation, graduates lined up to receive their diplomas behind the McGill faculty. One student carried a placard with the words emblazoned: “This is the most distinguished parade of the unemployed so far this year.” Enrollment at McGill between the wars hovered around the 3,000 mark. War hero Sir Arthur Currie had been principal since 1920. Currie was a benevolent dictator, described by one of his faculty as combining “a true sense of values with an earthy realism.”27 Stanford Reid’s life as a McGill undergraduate revolved around his faculty, Arts, his courses, the Union, and the Redpath Library. He brought his friends with him from high school. He was chosen class historian. In extracurricular activities he joined the History Club and became its president in his final year. His name often appeared in the student newspaper, The McGill Daily. In his first year at McGill, Reid took the general course – English, mathematics, Greek, and an hour in French, history, and Latin. He then went on to do an honours b.a. course in history and English. The second year, he took two courses in English, two in history, and one in French literature. In his third year he took only English and history with five courses. His final year was a heavy load of four English courses and two in history with an historical research paper. His grades swung back and forth: his second year he gained first class honours in English and second class in history, the third year that order was reversed, and in his final year he dropped to second class honours in both subjects. He graduated on 29 May 1934. His grades as an undergraduate were creditable though not brilliant. He was too involved in extracurricular activities for that. Increasingly his interests shifted to history, though he still maintained a keen interest in literature. On 22 November 1933 Stanford

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addressed the English Literature Society of McGill on Robert Louis Stevenson as a short-story writer.28 Analysing Stevenson’s writing skills, he called him “one of the greatest stylists in the English language, his writing being explicit and to the point.” Reid might well have modelled Stevenson’s skill as a stylist. His sentence structure was often convoluted, his choice of words repetitive. One woman in Montreal in the 1950s said she could always detect Stanford Reid’s unique style even when his name did not appear on the article. Her comment was not intended as a compliment, though Stanford cheerfully took it as such. Throughout his life, but particularly as he grew older, he wrote too quickly and too often. During Reid’s years of study, McGill’s history department was regarded one of the best in Canada, rivalled only by that of the University of Toronto. That high reputation was directly attributed to department head Basil Williams’s 1921 strategic plan. He discovered McGill’s three history professors stretched to the limit, unable to offer enough courses, and in no position to provide the help honours students required, let alone have time for reading, research, and publishing. As a remedy, he introduced an innovative new tutorial system patterned on the University of Toronto. He imported two new faculty members: Professors Waugh and Adair. One history student recalled that “Professor Waugh was English and taught medieval history; Professor Adair, also English, immediately on arrival became interested in Canadian history and actually taught what little American history we had, while Professor Fryer was American and taught Canadian history from a Canadian viewpoint.”29 In a 1941 article Edward Adair analysed “The Study of History at McGill University.” He displayed little sympathy with the North American way of teaching history, grandly claiming that McGill’s history department was unique on the continent in its commitment to an English model. “McGill employs more than any other the methods which have been derived from England, while Toronto and some of the universities farther west, being provincial institutions and so having a greater resemblance to the state universities of the United States, have taken over much more of their academic technique.”30 In sweeping generalizations, he contrasted English and American education, to the detriment of the latter. In the United States “the university is only too often regarded as an institution that will provide [the student] directly with the knowledge that will enable him to get and hold a job as soon as he is graduated.” English higher education “does not pay so much attention to the acquiring of information.” Rather, an undergraduate should be about “the development of his intellectual faculties, so that he will know what to do with the facts when he has discovered them.”

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He spoke of low standards of admission to North American universities, saying “that those who had survived the high school almost automatically entered the university.”31 His view of education, which certainly reflected that of the department during the 1930s and while he was chairman from 1942 to 1947, was elitist: only those who had “shown a real intellectual aptitude for profiting from the type of scholarship which a university ought to develop within its walls” should be admitted. This meant delving into a subject “to draw conclusions of some scholarly value, possibly to develop a real desire to continue with their studies long after the incentive of a degree is past.”32 Emphasis was placed on “real intellectual activity, a real development of their powers of criticism, of reasoning and of synthesis, to acquire such sound training, such a mental alertness, that they should have little difficulty in dealing with the intellectual problems with which life might present them.”33 Head of McGill’s history department when Reid entered university was William Templeton Waugh. Arriving at McGill in 1922, he became head of the department in 1925, succeeding Basil Williams. At the same time he was appointed Kingsford Professor. A medievalist, he had studied under T.F. Tout at Manchester, graduating with his b.a. in 1902. After three years training to be a Moravian minister, he instead joined the history department at Manchester.34 He came to McGill in 1922. History 7, his introduction to the Middle Ages, was Stanford Reid’s initiation into a subject that would be his lifelong interest. Waugh’s first book, The Lollard Knights, published in 1912, connects to his Moravian background and Jan Hus’s debt to John Wycliffe. Waugh must have piqued Stanford Reid’s interest in the subject because his doctoral research would be on the Scottish Lollards, the followers of Wycliffe.35 Waugh had oscillated between a career as a cleric and an academic, as Reid would subsequently do. Wearing both hats, he provided a precedent for Reid. No one member of the history department impacted Reid more. On 17 October 1932, at the age of forty-eight, while eating breakfast, Waugh dropped dead .36 The next day the Montreal Gazette eulogized that “The cause of education throughout Canada has been deprived of one of its outstanding exponents in the sudden passing of one who was quiet in sympathy, patient in his discourses, and at all times kindly and courteous and the sense of loss which his passing has occasioned among the university faculty, the student body, and his friends generally, is proportionately profound.”37 Principal Arthur Currie added that Waugh was an “inspiring and stimulating teacher and a brilliant scholar ... His especial interests lay in the field of mediaeval and ecclesiastical history, where he was universally regarded as a

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Edward Robert Adair (courtesy McGill University Archives)

world authority.” Waugh’s death halfway through Reid’s undergraduate years at McGill was a blow both to the History Department and to Reid personally.38 Edward Robert Adair – known as “the iconoclast”39 – came to McGill in 1925 as associate professor in the History Department. Born in London, his father an exiled Confederate officer and his mother Spanish, he registered as an alien at the outbreak of hostilities in 191440 and was essentially stateless. His seminars on New France and Tudor England were unforgettable. These were held in his home. As he sat by the fireplace in his study smoking his pipe, he served students China tea as he listened to their papers. He never missed a sentence and his criticism was penetrating, formidable, and occasionally sarcastic. “Although it sometimes seemed as though Professor Adair took a cruel delight in savage criticism,” one of his graduate students recalled when he died, “his real aim was to drill into his students the understanding that the historian must never take anything for granted, must question everything, squeeze dry every scrap of evidence, and above all, be fair if unequivocal in his judgments.”41 W.J. Eccles added that Adair “made it plain on many occasions that he cared nothing for the opinion of those who could do him harm if he disagreed openly with them.”42

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Reid took a course with Adair each of his three final years: in his second year it was History 2, a general survey of North and South American History; in his third, History 8, the History of Modern Europe to 1789: and in his final year a course he would later make his own, the History of Economic and Social Conditions, with special reference to England. Reid’s relationship with Adair was complex. Reid and Adair had a different – and difficult – relationship when Reid joined the history department in 1942 and Adair was head. Adair retired in 1954. The two men clashed because they had so much in common. Both were outspoken, shared an acerbic wit, and possessed a strong streak of cynicism. Reid owed much to Adair. “There was a touch of Adair in all of his pupils,” to quote of Reid’s graduate students43 who knew them both. Stanford Reid modelled Adair’s method of supervising graduate students: the tutorials, the home visits, the tea and conversation, the intensity of interest in each presentation and presenter. When Reid, in his final year at McGill, became president of the Historical Club, Adair served as faculty adviser. One coup for Stanford was to secure Arnold Toynbee, the noted historian visiting from England, to speak to the club as “the authority on questions pertaining to the new Turkey and the Near East.”44 To ensure a full house, Reid booked the Queen’s Hotel and the women from Royal Victoria College were invited. A selection from Toynbee’s 1946 Study of History would later provide the climax of his Intellectual History course. The year after he graduated with his B.A., Reid was invited back to speak on “The Battle of the Quatre Bras and the Campaign of 1815.” In that presentation he denied that Napoleon met his Waterloo at Waterloo. It was instead, he argued, Marshall Ney at Quatre Bras with his failure to finish off the German forces who was responsible for the final victory. “Ney lost the French Empire for Napoleon at Quatre Bras,” he concluded. Reid would continue to champion unpopular historical causes throughout his life. A third member of the department, Charles Edmund Fryer, was Reid’s master’s thesis supervisor. Like Adair he had a colourful resume.45 He had come to McGill in 1906 with a doctorate in Russian history. Stanford Reid caustically noted that “Since no one was interested in Russian history in those days he had to change his field, which frustrated him greatly.”46 He was made a full professor in 1921. Occasionally, his lectures would light up with unexpected humour, as Reid discovered when he made a complimentary statement about Napoleon’s first wife. “‘That, Reid,’ Fryer replied, ‘is damn nonsense. Josephine ... Josephine ... ’ – he chose his words with care, as a Harvard man should – ‘was nothing but a lecherous old bitch.’” When Reid told the members of the class this story, “Fryer’s stock went up

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considerably.” He provided some memorable advice that Reid – wisely or unwisely – took to heart. In lecturing he advised: “Do not worry, Reid, I always count on a minimum of intelligence in the audience.”47 In his third year Reid took History 4, the History of Canada, from Fryer and in his final year History 8, the History of Europe from 1789 to 1914. Fryer had a much better relationship with Reid than did Adair. As his m.a. supervisor48 he had high praise for Reid, whose academic standing at McGill was greatly enhanced when his M.A. was conferred cum laude on 7 October 1935. The thesis was published in 1936 by Presbyterian Publications, Toronto, at W.D.’s expense. The Church of Scotland in Lower Canada was based on extensive research in the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa, the correspondence of the Glasgow Colonial Missionary Society, the Ontario Provincial Archives, and various local records in the Montreal area. James Talman,49 who aided his inquiries at the Department of Public Records and Archives of Ontario,50 was highly complimentary in his review: “Mr Reid describes the struggle of the Church of Scotland to gain privileges equal to those enjoyed by the Church of England in the fields of marriage, education and registration of baptisms, marriages, and burials, as well as equal government grants, land endowments, and reserves. His task was made difficult by the necessity of first outlining the position of the Church of England in these matters, for they were by no means clearly defined. This Mr Reid has done so ably that his book might well have been entitled ‘The official position of the Churches of Scotland and England in Lower Canada.’”51 Another title for the book, he suggested, could have been, the Church of Scotland’s “struggle for privileges equal to those of the church of England.” Talman commended the volume as a “very clear statement which has been presented” with “logical conclusions drawn from it.” “His conclusion is that the Kirk did not achieve the position at which it aimed, which was establishment with the Church of England, and quite unintentionally started the movement which led to the downfall of all thought of an established church in both Lower and Upper Canada.”52 Other reviewers were also positive. In the free church British Weekly S.J.M. Carruthers called the study “illuminating and valuable.”53 Perhaps the most gratifying response of all to the book was from his father’s contemporary, J.B. Maclean, minister in Huntingdon, Quebec. Maclean wrote to W.D., “Stanford certainly has the scholar’s interest, the patience to collect facts, discrimination in dealing with doubtful situations, power of analysis, and fairness in judgment. His English style is most excellent – indeed I found the book most fascinating not only because of the story but also because of the way it is told.”54

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Stanford Reid with his mother, graduation day 1934 (courtesy pcca)

In 1935 Stanford Reid was twenty-two years old. He had a reputation: some described him as “brash,” while others found him clever and articulate. He was ambitious and unafraid of the disciplined hard work that would bring him success in life. His thoroughness as a researcher had been demonstrated by his m.a. thesis. Where could his considerable gifts be best employed? Many Westmount and McGill contemporaries were choosing well-paid professions. His brother Stewart, who entered McGill the year he left Montreal, would become a doctor. At that turning point in his life, Stanford made a dramatic break with the conventional. He left Canada, entered a theological school in the United States, and – if that was not enough – chose as his seminary a new and untried institution that had already gained a reputation for controversy. It was a pivotal decision. The years at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia would shape his future and redirect it in ways no one could have anticipated.

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3 Defining a Precocious Piety, 1922–1938 Finding God in Unconventional Places

Stanford Reid was nine years old when, on 8 December 1922, he joined Stanley Church as a full communicant member. According to the Presbyterian system, he previously met with the Session (the elders) and then, in front of the entire congregation, answered questions about his personal faith, professing to believe the Apostles’ Creed, which, along with the Lord’s Prayer, he would have memorized. For a son or daughter of a minister, standing up before your father’s congregation in a public ceremony can be a daunting experience. Clergy children often feel the burden of expectations. Until the 1960s Quebec’s Protestants, almost totally anglophone, were unusual in the extent of their church commitment. They were surrounded by majority, ultramontane, francophone Catholicism. Catholicism was the French Canadian way of cultural and ethnic survival as a conquered nation. The église towered over every community, the bounds of the paroisse defined the geography. The curé was a man of extraordinary privilege and prestige. The church’s educational system ensured total lifelong and unquestioning commitment. For two hundred years the papacy had no greater ally than the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Quebec. In response, Quebec anglophone Protestants likewise looked to their church to protect their own unique cultural independence. As their francophone counterparts went faithfully to mass each week, so they also loyally attended their services of worship. Protestant church commitment in Quebec was unusually strong. Congregations were generously supported, and buildings, though not nearly as massive as

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French-Canadian structures, were nonetheless impressive and well maintained. After Church Union, the largest regional body in the entire United Church was the Presbytery of Montreal. And in the continuing Presbyterian Church, the Presbytery of Montreal, a stronghold of antiUnionist agitation prior to 1925, was similarly one of the largest in the country.1 The Presbyterian Presbytery of Montreal had its own networks, all well supported. Regional events frequently brought together Sunday schools, youth fellowships, and men’s and women’s organizations. For a majority of Protestant and Roman Catholic Quebeckers there was no hesitation in the response when asked the name of one’s church or minister. Today, for Catholic and Protestant alike, most of that loyalty has vanished. Quebec is the most secularized society in North America. The Quebec culture of church life could have the effect of making religion conventional and comfortable. The elders of Stanley Church saw that as a real danger for their youth and set about deliberately to challenge them to make a religious commitment that was more than routine and predictable. A Young Man’s Bible Class was formed in September 1920. The following year a student from Presbyterian College was hired at a salary of sixty dollars a month to take charge of young people’s work, and two elders were asked to lead “and to push the work with vigour.”2 Stanford Reid was one of those most affected by this decision. Five years after his confirmation, he would discover personal faith in a most unconventional manner. The experience on a Montreal street corner at the age of fourteen was as significant as that of John Wesley’s at Aldersgate Chapel when Wesley’s heart was strangely moved. Fifty years later, Reid described the experience in a letter: “I never heard about the doctrine of justification by faith alone until out of curiosity I went with my Bible Class teacher to an open air meeting in the east end of Montreal, and that doctrine was set forth more clearly and unambiguously.” The lesson was not lost on Reid that it was not in Westmount, in the sacred space of Stanley Church, with the polished and refined oratory of his father, but at an open-air meeting in the east end of Montreal that the fourteen-year-old youth had what he would ever after describe as an encounter with God. The street preacher had spoken simply and earnestly of the need to make a commitment. His words brought an immediate and lasting response. “It met my spiritual need as nothing had done and for the last fifty years I have held that to be the very heart and core of the Gospel.”3 At the end of the 1920s there was a strong fundamentalist presence in socialite anglophone Montreal. The upper-class business community

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provided both salon and patron. Winnifred Savage Grier, the wife of lumber baron George Wardrope Grier, made the Grier mansion on Redpath Crescent the centre of prayer and missionary meetings. She worked with Daisy Reid on a variety of worthy causes. Winnifred had first met Stanford’s mother in 1909 as Daisy Stanford was fund-raising for the Nasik hospital. Winnifred’s large and spacious parlour became the venue for other missionary agencies: the India-based Dohnavur Fellowship founded by Irish missionary and author Amy Carmichael, the China Inland Mission, and Daisy’s own Zenana Mission. Winnifred Grier’s family was solidly Presbyterian, members of the downtown socialite and recently merged Church of St Andrew and St Paul.4 It was a strange mix: conventional upper-crust Presbyterianism and pietist interdenominational missionary enthusiasm. The other wealthy patron of evangelical causes in Montreal was stockbroker Arthur James Nesbitt, who had grown up Plymouth Brethren in St John, New Brunswick. In 1906 he was invited by Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) to open a Royal Securities office in Montreal. Six years later he went into partnership with P.A. Thomson. Nesbitt Thomson thrived by underwriting Canada’s burgeoning hydroelectrical industry and would later create the Power Corporation of Canada. As Nesbitt’s business expanded, he continued his philanthropic interests, particularly among organizations sympathetic to his childhood faith, a faith that he had never abandoned in the interests of something more socially acceptable. Each employee of Nesbitt Thomson was given a Bible and grace was said before all company dinners at which he was present. His grandson would observe: “His self-control stood him in good stead as his material wealth increased, for his taste was impeccable and throughout he never lost sight of his firm beliefs.”5 The Reids were friendly with the Griers and knew the Nesbitts. The Nesbitt home on Forden Crescent was just a few blocks away from 619 Victoria Avenue. Nesbitt’s son Deane was a couple of years ahead of Stanford at Westmount High and during Stanford’s third year at McGill became president of the Students’ Executive Council. Deane was a nominal Presbyterian and was married from the same church the Griers attended, St Andrew and St Paul. Was it a father’s spiritual concern for his son that made Arthur Nesbitt warm to the visit of a young man, Howard Guinness, who had been sent from England to found a student organization “true to the Word of God” that would encourage and evangelize students in Canada’s universities? During the Christmas holidays of 1921–22, the Student Christian Movement of Canada had formally organized as an affiliate of the international Student Volunteer Movement. The “Aim and Basis”

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under which they constituted stated as its belief simply that “Jesus is supreme among men.” Its purpose was “To study without any initial theory as to the nature or source of the records about Jesus.”6 Finding this statement inadequate, and regarding the Canadian movement as having capitulated to religious liberalism, students in England who were affiliated with the original and first student Christian movement, the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, sold their tennis rackets in the fall of 1928 to finance a trip to Canada by one of their members. His task would be to determine whether an alternative organization, true to the original vision and credo of the Student Volunteer Movement,7 could be organized for interested evangelical university students. The representative the Cambridge students chose was Howard Guinness, a member of a branch of the Irish brewing family. Howard’s grandfather, on becoming a born-again Christian, swore off alcohol. His daughter Geraldine married the son of China Inland Mission founder Hudson Taylor. She (and nominally her husband) wrote Taylor’s life in the classic popular hagiographic tradition of missionary biography. Geraldine was a good friend of Winnifred Savage Grier, whose mansion became her Canadian home when she travelled to Montreal. Howard Guinness, Geraldine’s nephew, now found a ready welcome there. And once the money from the sale of tennis rackets ran out, there was the ready charity of Arthur Nesbitt. Through the salon of Winnifred Greer and the patronage of A.J. Nesbitt was born the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada. It would be a challenge, an alternative, and an irritant to the Student Christian Movement. As it did with many Christian university students in the 1930s and 1940s, the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship had a profound impact on Stanford Reid during his years as a student at McGill. On 23 February 1930, Kenneth Hooker, Howard Guinness’ replacement when Guinness returned to England, called a meeting to organize a McGill Evangelical Christian Union. The venue was Winnifred Savage Grier’s living room. Twenty-five men and two women accepted the invitation and became charter members. At the invitation of Lyall Detlor, a McGill student who was a member of Stanley Church destined for the ministry, Stanford attended even though he was still at Westmount High School. Detlor was chairman of the meeting. Hooker described the gathering subsequently in his diary: “Lyall Detlor outlined the history, object, programme of the Union; Dr Bell Dawson [son of the former McGill principal] spoke briefly and I finished up with a five minute harangue.” Lyall was chosen as president of the new group. Arthur Nesbitt had been invited but was out of town. He had been fully acquainted ahead of time as to the purpose of the meeting as his support was essential.

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At the request of the meeting, Lyall Detlor approached Sir Arthur Currie as principal of McGill: “He was very kind and friendly, but rather patronizing,” Detlor reported back. Official recognition would be a long time coming. University authorities looked with suspicion on the Fellowship as a rival to the officially recognized Student Christian Movement. Nesbitt finally secured grudging acceptance and continued to subsidize generously the new organization. In the fall of 1930, he bought a house at 10 Edgar Avenue in the upscale Toronto suburb of Rosedale as headquarters for Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada. The Fellowship’s work was coordinated through an annual conference held just as the academic year was about to begin. The first for Reid, in 1931, was actually the third annual conference. Like the previous two, it was held in the China Inland Mission “prayer room” at 150 St George Street, close to the University of Toronto. Four representatives had been appointed from McGill, but when the car in which they were to travel to Toronto broke down in Montreal, they clubbed together to pay Stanford’s railway fare. The speaker was Robert Hall Glover, home director for North America of the China Inland Mission. Like the Reids, Glover was also from Leeds, Quebec. Called to be a missionary at fourteen, he went on to the University of Toronto and studied medicine at New York University. The 1900 Boxer Rebellion ended his missionary career in China and he returned to North America, where he was for almost half a century a leading promoter of the missionary movement.8 Reid came to that 1931 conference following his first summer in mission work. He had been posted to Lost River and Crystal Falls, two small rural Quebec congregations north of Montreal, and not far from Harrington and Avoca where his father had served. Sermon notes from that summer ring with youthful earnestness. On 21 June 1931, “a fine day,” twenty people attended at Crystal Falls. The numbers were down “owing to [the county] fair,” he explained. The fair also won out at Lost River: only two turned up, so the sermon he was planning to repeat from the morning titled “The Valley of Decision” had to be postponed. That message was typical of that period of his life: your decision, he told the congregation, “between Christ and the devil” is the “most important of life.” He ended with an earnest appeal: “we must all make it,” “now is the accepted time,” and then the question: “Have you made the decision?” That summer of 1931 reinforced Stanford Reid’s commitment to evangelistic engagement among his peers at McGill. It was a costly decision for the ambitious honours student from Westmount. As he attended the conference the song leader, the then popular gospel hymn

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writer Robert Harkness, asked those present to name a favourite Bible verse. Stanford was the first to shoot up his hand and suggested Deuteronomy 31:6, “Be strong and of good courage.” It was a commitment that would be tested – and confirmed – during his undergraduate years. Two years later, Reid was chosen by his peers to be the president of the McGill Inter-Varsity chapter. The McGill Daily headlined a report of one of his Inter-Varsity talks: “Eternal Christ Was Theme of S. Reid’s Address Yesterday.”9 He was quoted verbatim: “All people look to the future with fear, except those who are trusting in the Christ of the future.” The meeting concluded with an invitation to all present from Arthur Hill, Guinness and Hooker’s successor as national director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, to meet at the Reid home in Westmount for further discussion. As the first Canadian to be Inter-Varsity’s national director, Arthur Hill’s appointment raised new concerns. How would paid staff and volunteer students relate to each other? Who would determine policy, raise money, and provide leadership? The British Inter-Varsity Fellowship insisted on student initiative. Was this possible in Canada, given the variety of ministries Guinness had plunged into during his whirlwind trip to Canada? High school clubs and summer camps required a different approach than anything the British Inter-Varsity Fellowship had known. There was a need for a new kind of organization and a different style of leadership. At the 1933 annual conference, medical student Bill Klinck asked that he and the other students be freed from administration and finances to serve instead as “missionaries on campus.” In the discussion that followed, it was moved that an executive council be formed to administer the Fellowship. It was an historic moment when Stanford Reid stood up in the meeting to move in amendment “that the Student Executive members be ex-officio members of the National Executive.” His amendment carried, and an executive council, later called a board of directors, was set up. The following year, at the sixth national conference, as a result of his amendment a year earlier, Stanford Reid became by election student vice-president of Canadian Inter-Varsity and an ex-officio member of council. In 1934 Arthur Hill was succeeded as national director of the Fellowship by a young Australian, C. Stacey Woods. Though at the time an Anglican preparing for holy orders, Stacey had grown up among the Plymouth Brethren and came to North America to attend the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Dallas, a centre for J.N. Darby’s dispensationalism.10 On arrival in Toronto, Woods boarded at the China Inland Mission home. Stanford Reid found accommodation there too

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when he did research at the Ontario Provincial Archives for his master’s thesis. “He would come to my bedroom,” Reid recalled to Stacey Woods’ widow following his death in 1983, “at some outlandish hour and wake me up just to talk. It was during those weeks that we became quite close friends, so that when he came to Montreal he usually stayed at my father’s home where he was quite a favourite with my parents, particularly for his sense of humour.”11 Stacey Woods would go on to introduce Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship first to the United States and then, globally, through an agency called the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. From the days of John R. Mott and Robert Speer of the Student Volunteer Movement, no one person had more influence on Christian students in secular universities. Stanford Reid was among those who experienced Stacey Woods’ remarkable gifts of networking. Not that the two always agreed. Reid recalled that on one occasion Woods showed him a course he was mapping out for Christians to help them cope intellectually with the challenges they confronted while at McGill. “When it was reported to Stacey, he felt that it was not exactly the sort of thing the Fellowship should be doing. I never had a chance to discuss this with Stacey whom I knew quite well, but as a result it was dropped. Then a little later when some other students proposed that I should offer a similar course, the President opposed the idea on the ground that I had a strong Calvinistic position they would find difficult to refute as I was well grounded in biblical doctrine.”12 For five years, from 1930 to 1935, through the impressionable ages of seventeen to twenty-two, Stanford Reid’s view of Christianity was shaped by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Its leadership, directors Kenneth Hooker and Arthur Hill, staff member Cathie Nicoll, and finally Stacey Woods, made a great impact on him. But in the autumn of 1935, other influences would shape his Christian faith. This transition he described as passing from pietism to the Reformed faith. It might also arguably be seen as passing from the faith formulation of one grandfather to the other: from the millenarianism of Reuben Stanford to the Calvinism of Joseph Reid. No matter how one describes it, it was a decisive redefinition of Stanford Reid’s understanding of the Christian faith. Why did Stanford Reid make the momentous choice of attending Westminster Seminary? Aside from his father’s long-time friendship with Westminster’s founder, J. Gresham Machen, it was more than anything the contrast that the school provided academically, theologically and spiritually to Presbyterian College Montreal at the time. The college had changed since the days of its first principal. Danny Fraser, as the

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Reids called him, confirmed the drift in the theological direction of the school. A non-concurrent, Fraser would continue lecturing right up until a few months before his death in 1948, though he resigned as principal in 1928. He and his colleague, Thomas Eakin (appointed to the practical theology chair in 1920), were both anti-Church Union. “Danny Fraser and Tom Eakin,” Reid would later recall, “were certainly not evangelical. Then Scott MacKenzie, who succeeded Fraser in Montreal, was even less orthodox and had a faculty including Harvey Jellie and Frank Beare who were both very far off.”13 Orthodoxy was only one concern. After 1925 and the resolution of the legal status of the college as a continuing Presbyterian school, which entailed the loss of a considerable amount of the endowment money, Presbyterian College deteriorated academically and administratively. There were frequent General Assembly interventions. Both Daniel Fraser and Scott MacKenzie saw their terms as principal brought to untimely and controversial ends. Frank W. Beare,14 no slouch academically, was described as “feisty” in the official history of the college,15 and his resignation in 1945 as professor of church history (and subsequent departure from the Presbyterian Church in Canada) was attributed to the fact that he “was at odds with some of the more conservative elements in the church.” It was Frank Beare himself who brought Stanford Reid to make the final break with Presbyterian College. Reid had started attending lectures there in the fall of 1934 when, in his own words, “I was really tossed out of Beare’s class because I quoted to him the Westminster Confession’s statement on Christ’s resurrection, after he had denied Christ’s bodily resurrection. This gave me good grounds for going to Westminster.”16 Prior to coming to Presbyterian College as sessional lecturer in church history the year before, Beare had been assistant to Dr Stewart Parker, minister of St Andrew’s Church in downtown Toronto. Parker would later stand up at the 1942 General Assembly and, with individuals such as Stanford Reid in mind, accuse those who had gone to the United States for their theological studies of disloyalty to the denomination. Stanford Reid, in “an open letter to Dr Stuart Parker” in Toronto’s Globe and Mail the following week, responded to Parker’s accusation, pointing out that he was one of three McGill students who had been registered at Presbyterian College in the 1930s but instead went south. Two of the three – Stanford’s classmate at Westmount High School Malcolm Ransom and Robert Lennox, his close friend at McGill – chose Princeton Theological Seminary; Reid could have added the name of E.H. Johnson, who also went to Princeton. Reid selected Westminster Seminary, which had split from Princeton in 1929 in order

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to maintain Princeton’s old orthodoxies. “The reason for our so doing,” he explained in the open letter to Parker, “was that we found the training given in the Presbyterian College absolutely inadequate, yes, even detrimental to our own personal faith. I stood it for two weeks as a student in the Presbyterian College and then turned to the process of taking my Master of Arts.”17 When Stanford Reid arrived in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1935, he received a warm welcome from J. Gresham Machen. Machen had nurtured close links with the Presbyterian Church in Canada as a friend of the non-concurring Presbyterians at the time of Union. He had sent many of his students north on summer appointments. These students filled a real need in the depleted ranks of clergy, serving churches that would otherwise not have regular pulpit supply. In April 1925 Machen made a timely visit to Canada, galvanizing Presbyterians opposed to the impending union. He preached at Knox Church, Toronto, and MacVicar Church in Montreal. In his seventies, Stanford Reid was asked to share memories of Machen, lovingly nicknamed Das by his students, from the German das Madchen: I have many recollections of Dr Machen. He was quite a friend of my father, so when I arrived from Canada at Westminister in the fall of 1935 I received a very warm welcome. I remember him taking me out to dinner at the Drake Hotel where he lived and when we sat down he handed me the menu with the comment: “Here, you read the text and I’ll exegete.” But even more important he was the one who insisted that there should be a stunt night each year with faculty and students taking part. In this he was the star of the evening. I remember two readings or discourses which he gave. One was on what not to do when preaching, e.g. taking a step backward when saying, “Let us go forward!” Another one, the name of which I cannot remember, was a favorite with the students. It was about a man who purchased a tiger as a pet, and the tiger gradually ate the family, and Das would say: “I was mad, I was very mad.” And he would shake his jowls fiercely, but then he would repent because his son or daughter was now part of the tiger. Finally after the animal had eaten his wife, he thought he would have the tiger killed, but could not for it had become “a sort of family burying ground.” Das used to say that a successful minister must also be a good stunt man. And he used to put on stunts in class. I remember one day when he was dealing with the relationship between the Gospel of Luke and Acts, he got very enthusiastic behind the table in the class. He dropped on one knee and then on both and was laying it down with his finger waving at me as I was sitting in the front seat. Then he suddenly realized what he was doing and made a swipe at me with his finger, causing me

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to duck, at which he laughed and stood up and continued with the lecture. Another time there was a dog fight out on Pine Street, and Das went to the window to look. At this he gave a sort of cackling laugh and said: “Well boys, as the Irishman said when he saw two men fighting, is this private or can anyone take a hand in it?”18

Machen was both crusader and campaigner, inspiring and motivating students for “a new Reformation.” Reid later described Machen’s new Reformation: “Theological Modernism, which has led to much of the theological degradation of the day, would be pushed aside by those who were characterized by faith in Christ as Savior and Lord, and who, possessed ‘by an heroic honesty,’ would take their stand without any consideration of consequences. With such a movement would come a new Renaissance that would encourage true originality, independence of mind, and ‘plain common sense.’”19 It was not until his second year at the seminary that Stanford Reid was enrolled in one of Machen’s courses. The autumn of 1936 he registered for New Testament 221, Gospel History, a required course. For five hours a week – the largest number of course hours he ever took at the seminary – he sat under Machen’s instruction. Machen’s sudden death before he could mark the final examination papers meant Reid simply received a “satisfactory” on his grade for Gospel History. Stanford Reid’s Westminster grade transcript is an impressive document.20 His marks rarely slipped below a 1, the highest grade the school could give. During his three years, his average went up: from 1.18 to 1.16 to 1.0 the final year. Ironically his poorest grades, both 2s, were in preaching, with R.B. Kuiper as instructor. His course load was rigorous and demanding: between seventeen and twenty hours of lectures during each of the six semesters. Preparation and study had to be squeezed into a six-day week for the institution was strictly sabbatarian and any study on Sunday was frowned on. During the two summers between the three years at Westminster, he gained extra credits while working on a thesis in church history to ensure that, in addition to the Th.B. degree, he would also receive the Th.M. on graduation. His academic record at Westminster was unsurpassed and established the high reputation he would subsequently enjoy at the school as academic and scholar. Not that Stanford Reid was just another swot, to use the British expression. He participated fully in the social life of the school. His roommate for his first and third years was Earl Robinson. A 1934 science graduate of Amherst College, Robinson lost his teaching job after his first year. In despair at failing a perfectionist father, Robinson was

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led to faith by journalist Carl Henry, later to be a significant player on the evangelical stage and editor of Christianity Today. As a result, Robinson decided he needed to know more about the Bible. His minister took him to Princeton Seminary. He was not impressed. Then Carl Henry drove him down one Saturday to see Westminster Seminary, then in downtown Philadelphia on Pine Street. What excited him most was a library filled with students “on a Saturday, no less.” Immediately, he decided “This is the place for me.” The roommate he was assigned was Stanford Reid. A greater contrast in character could not be imagined. “Stan,” Robinson recalled almost sixty-five years later, “was the best person for me. He taught me things and kept my nose to the grindstone.”21 As a science major, slightly diffident and unsure, Reid helped him study and gain confidence. Robinson admired him as a man of conviction who was hard to move. “It was good for me,” he remembered. In their second year, 1936–37, Stanford moved out to the Gladstone Hotel, which Robinson could not afford. For their final year, 1937–38, when the seminary had moved to a large estate in the Philadelphia suburb of Glenside purchased with Machen’s legacy, Reid and Robinson lived together at one of two gate houses. Stanford kept the coal furnace operational and picked up the mail each day from the Chestnut Hill post office, using the Model A Ford he had driven the previous summer on a mission field. When Stanford Reid returned to Montreal for Christmas 1935 following his first semester at Westminster, he met with his Inter-Varsity friends.22 With all the zeal of a new convert, he told them how the seminary had affected his view of Christian life, doctrine, and particularly conduct. Doctrinally, he now had a coherent and systematic theology based on the unity of the Bible in a single covenant of grace (no more dispensationalism) and a strong emphasis on predestination and divine election. More shocking to those who gathered that evening was the altered view of what was permissible behaviour for the Christian. Westminster had introduced him to the concept of adiaphora, a New Testament word meaning “things indifferent.” Most of the fundamentalist taboos were placed in that category, as matters indifferent, not essential to faith. To Reid, given fundamentalism’s strict code of behaviour, it was a revolutionary break. As he called things his friends at McGill regarded as essential aspects of the Christian life “legalism,” he went on to describe the faculty’s disregard of fundamentalism’s shibboleths. The Scottish professor John Murray, along with many Dutch Calvinists, loved his cigars. Reid spoke of faculty meetings at Westminster dense with smoke. It was even rumoured that Scotch whiskey

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had been prescribed as a remedy for colds. Card playing and theatre attendance were not out of bounds. In reality, little changed personally for Stanford Reid except that he was no longer a teetotaller.23 As they listened to these disclosures, his Inter-Varsity circle was appalled. Stanford Reid had abandoned their moral code and decisively broken with the past. Their emotional response that evening anticipated a lifetime of rejection of Stanford Reid by many strict fundamentalists who took offense at his exercise of what he called his Christian liberty.24 In her diary for November 1955, a candid Priscilla Reid summarized the ambivalence she and her husband felt: “I may be wrong but I am not, and have never been, enthusiastic about Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. The members are too pious and smug for my liking and I never feel comfortable with most of them. Fellowship House [3445 Peel Street, the Inter-Varsity residence at McGill] is really a haven for campus misfits and instead of being a strong Christian centre it is really a hot bed of legalism.”25 When in the 1980s Stanford Reid was asked26 for a retired faculty member’s assessment of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship he replied sadly: “I have found on a number of occasions that unless a speaker follows right along on a customary spiritual line, that the Fellowship simply writes him or her off as being non-evangelical. So frequently there is a lack of openness to biblical teaching and a stress upon a tradition of some sort which is regarded as virtually infallible.”27 The contrast between Westminster Seminary and Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship became clearer in February of 1936 at the annual meeting of the League of Evangelical Students in Chicago. The League had been founded in 1925 by Princeton Seminary theologs in reaction to the religious liberalism of some seminaries28 that had “departed from the central message of evangelical Christianity.”29 Machen’s endorsement of the League was one reason for his censure by the committee that came to investigate difficulties at Princeton Seminary.30 The League had student chapters in Bible colleges, Christian colleges, secular universities and theological seminaries. Its first secretary (1928–29) was Paul Woolley. Under Woolley’s successor, William J. Jones,31 the League expanded. Jones, like Woolley an old Princeton graduate, followed an irenic approach that was distinctly Reformed and evangelical but not aggressively separatist. Calvin Knox Cummings assumed leadership in 1935. Cummings was stridently separatist and dismissive of non-Reformed pietism.32 Stacey Woods, representing Christian work in Canadian universities, was invited as a fraternal delegate to Chicago to the 1936 annual meeting of the League. Many League members were uncertain as to what

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he represented theologically and regarded Inter-Varsity, about to be launched in the United States, as suspect. Machen articulated these fears, accusing Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of “pietism” and arguing that the organization needed “a more thorough theological orientation.”33 Stacey Woods saw this as a defining moment. “This contretemps made it apparent that the League would not meet the special needs of average American undergraduates; a biblically based and evangelistically oriented movement was needed.”34 Within two years, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship entered the United States through the formation of a chapter at the University of Michigan and by 1939, had appointed four American staff. Meanwhile, after Machen’s death, the League withered and died. Once in the United States, Inter-Varsity grew dramatically, extending in a short time to most American secular colleges and universities. This cleavage highlighted the ambivalent loyalties of many evangelicals. For Stanford Reid, there was no such ambivalence: he had abandoned “pietism” (a word he used often and negatively). He chose instead values and a lifestyle that, to use Machen’s words, operated from “a more thorough theological orientation.” Among fundamentalists, Reid’s anti-pietism caused misunderstanding.35 It also helped to define his position. As a Christian academic, in that era of pledge-signing and fiery fundamentalist sermons on “the separated life,” shot at from left and right, he was on his own. In ways that are inconceivable today, his Christian faith was assailed. He was ostracized and vilified by those with whom he had the most in common. If Carl McIntire and his friends could split Westminster Seminary – at least partly over “the drink question” as they called it – Stanford Reid need not be surprised that his rejection of pietism came at a heavy cost and isolated him from many who shared his faith. Interaction with the Westminster faculty broadened Reid’s horizons. Among the faculty, three stood out. The ones to whom he would refer most in later life as having had an impact on him were the systematic theologian John Murray, the historian Paul Woolley, and the Christian apologist Cornelius (“K.C.”) Van Til. John Murray, professor of systematic theology, had been brought up in the Free Presbyterian Church36 in Scotland, a small separatist sect with strong views on Sabbath observance, worship, and non-cooperation with most other denominations. Free Presbyterians were convinced believers in the “regulative principle of worship,” that only what scripture specifically allowed was appropriate for worship. Murray shared their opposition to instrumental music and singing anything other than the psalter. One day, Reid on the piano and Earl Robinson

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on the violin were playing jazz duets in the common room in Machen Hall, the name of the seminary’s new headquarters and student residence. Murray interrupted them, inquiring what the two were doing. Stanford Reid explained facetiously that they were playing a new psalm tune. What was the title of the new metre, Murray inquired. “Pennies From Heaven” was Reid’s quick reply. “Murray told us to go on playing and he would listen.” Throughout his teaching years at Westminster, John Murray remained unmarried. He was a lovable eccentric, a careful Biblical exegete, a Scottish Calvinist straight out of the seventeenth century. Students who lived on campus would remember how at meal time (which he always had with them), when bored, he would soak a napkin in his water glass, twist the wet paper into the form of a monocle, and put it up to the glass eye which replaced the real one lost in combat in France. Church historian Paul Woolley was likewise radically different from any type of Christian Reid had previously encountered. The son of a minister at Moody Church, Chicago, a fundamentalist bastion, he had married a Russian countess while in Germany preparing to go to China as a missionary. In 1929 Westminster called on his considerable skills to organize the entire new school at short notice. Woolley legends abounded at Westminster: his wife was rumoured to have kept a family gold dinner service from her St Petersburg days in the seminary vault. Woolley had an encyclopaedic knowledge of railway timetables. An administrative genius, he was thorough, hard-working, and took infinite pains with responsive students. In his preface to The Church of Scotland in Lower Canada, Stanford Reid thanked Woolley as the one “who gave invaluable help in revising the thesis.” On Wooley’s seventy-fifth birthday, Reid would pay an affectionate tribute: “As I look back over the past forty years, I realize as a Christian historian, how much I owed to the Seminary, but particularly to you for the guidance and encouragement which I received ... I simply wish to thank you.”37 In the Woolley festschrift Reid expressed his and the contributors’ “appreciation for his faithful service to Westminster Seminary and his stimulation of their interest in the history of the Christian church, particularly of Calvinism.”38 Of the third of his teachers at Westminster, Cornelius Van Til, Stanford Reid would later say: “I owe a great deal to him, for I applied his method of apologetics to teaching, particularly in courses in intellectual history in two secular universities ... and had rather amazing results at times.”39 As professor of apologetics, Van Til represented a whole new world of Reformed thought, a continental Calvinism that, throughout his life, Reid found highly congenial. He taught himself Dutch in order to read philosophical, historical, and theological texts

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not translated into English. And subsequently, when immigrants from Holland poured into Canada after the war and the Christian Reformed Church burgeoned, he found in it an ecclesiastical community with whom he was, if anything, as welcome as he was within his own Presbyterian orbit. Van Til had been the bridge into a whole other world, as to a lesser extent had been his preaching professor, R.B. Kuiper. Reid wrote to Van Til on his ninetieth birthday: I believe that the apologetics course was the most important one which I took at Westminster. This was the case, not so much when I was ministering to a congregation, although it was a help there, but when I moved into teaching history at McGill and later at Guelph. Basing my thinking on your whole method of approach, I taught history from that point of view with quite amazing results. This was particularly true of a course I gave for some twenty years on western intellectual history since 1500. I would have the class read various assigned readings and we would discuss them in class, and I would all the time use your methodology to present criticisms of non-Christian positions and then have them think of the Christian writers, philosophers, musicians., artists, etc. The results were very often extremely interesting – my approach was quite acceptable to the university authorities, for at McGill I was asked to act as the fill-in lecturer for the principal’s course on economic history and when I was asked to take over the directorship of the men’s residences I was told by the principal that it was because of my Presbyterian stance. And I found that the same attitude was common at the University of Guelph.40

Van Til’s influence on Reid was not always beneficial. The facility Van Til’s apologetic provided in the analysis and dissection of views differing from his own could sometimes get Reid into difficulty. Like Van Til, Stanford Reid was at times not able to hear someone coming with a different perspective. His judgments were not always objective or measured. Partially this inability to listen (temperament had something to do with it too) could be attributed to an uncritical reliance on Van Til’s epistemology and metaphysics. Some of the maddening generalizations, the straw men, in Stanford Reid’s writing, the lapse in logic, the easy exaggerations, that discredited his otherwise careful research, have (fairly or unfairly) been attributed to the influence of Cornelius Van Til. The sheer volume of Stanford Reid’s published material at times tripped him up. The danger with Van Til’s system was its difficulty in engaging in serious dialogue with those who challenged its presuppositions. Karl Barth was anathema. Other Christians could easily be discredited. Van Til’s methodology could be reduced to a template, short-circuiting serious intellectual encounter and engagement with opponents.

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It is easy to caricature Van Til. At a time when many fundamentalists were in full intellectual rout, his positive and aggressive stance was a welcome antidote. His inflexibility and rigidity had its strengths. His methodology gave the student a method of analysis that was often useful. Capable of searing and searching insights, Van Til opened new doors to students such as Stanford Reid. There is no question that he provided Reid with a perspective unique among his university colleagues but also among his Christian contemporaries. On 1 January 1937, in a remote North Dakota town, J. Gresham Machen died suddenly and tragically of pneumonia at fifty-seven. “How much influence did he have?” Reid once asked rhetorically. “His sudden decease at a relatively early age appears to have cut back this influence, at least in the eyes of those who see such events only in their space-time context.”41 Its immediate effect was to throw the school, along with Machen’s other causes, further into turmoil. As in 1925 Stanford Reid found himself in the midst of theological debate and schism. Even before Machen’s death, the three organizations that he had helped to found – Westminster Seminary, the Independent Board for Foreign Missions, and the infant Presbyterian Church in America (after a court case renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) – had been racked by divisions. His death (caused at least partly by the stress of the widening chasms) removed a steadying hand from the helm.42 At the seminary the issues centred around eschatology and Christian conduct. One of the agitators was Old Testament Professor Allan MacRae. One day in class Reid recalled MacRae delivering a tirade against alcoholic beverages. A student objected and a chalk fight ensued. Allan MacRae stated in his letter of resignation from the faculty that “control of the faculty had passed into the hands of a small alien group without American Presbyterian background.” Others felt that it was an historic reversion to the division of 1837 between new school and old school American Presbyterians.43 Ultimately the matter, as in most church disputes, came down to personality and power. By mid–1937 all three of Machen’s organizations had fissured. The Independent Board went with the fundamentalists. These “Bible” Presbyterians dissociated themselves from “Orthodox” Presbyterians. A new seminary, named Faith, was organized. It was a costly and bloody battle. Families were divided and students at Westminster were forced to take sides, some going to the new school and some, like Stanford, remaining on course. Stanford Reid took exception44 to the suggestion that the 1937 divisions were between “Dutchmen” and the “authentic” American Presbyterians or (as they were

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sometimes described) the Wheaton/California group. Westminster was classically Reformed in a way that the old Princeton Seminary, steeped in eighteenth-century Scottish common sense philosophy, never had been. Stanford Reid was much more a product of the new Calvinism than of the historical scholasticism of Archibald Alexander and Charles Hodge.45 On 10 May 1938, Stanford Reid graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary with academic distinction. He was awarded the Stevenson Scholarship for post-graduate study and the William Benton Greene Prize in apologetics. His final assessment of those three tempestuous years at Westminster, after a lifetime observing other theological schools, was upbeat: “As I look back at the seminary in those days and compare it with other seminaries at which I have taught in Canada, the USA and Australia, I would say that [Westminster] had very few weaknesses. The faculty members were very good scholars ... altogether I would say that its training was of the best.”46 Stanford Reid’s sermon notes in the eight years he was a student minister, from 1931 to 1938, provide insight into his spiritual and theological odyssey. Each summer he was preaching, as his father had before him, in small rural congregations in Quebec and eastern Ontario. From his first two years, 1931 and 1932, spent in Crystal Falls and Lost River, he went on for the following two to Mille Isles and Côte St Gabriel in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal. In 1935 he was appointed to Braeside in eastern Ontario, in Lanark and Renfrew Presbytery. In 1936 he was at Côte St George on the Quebec-Ontario border, one of the historic Glengarry settlements. In 1937 he returned to Mille Isles and Côte St Gabriel, which he also supplied in 1938. Using his father’s system, his sermon manuscript (in point form) was carefully typed, catalogued by volume, with the circumstances of that Sunday carefully noted. The notes were never taken into the pulpit: like his father, he was a strong believer in preaching without a manuscript, committing his points to memory. The sermons evidenced meticulous preparation and careful exegesis but lacked any illustrations or personal references. One assumes that these were provided spontaneously. As to the content of his preaching, Reid patterned himself not after his father but rather the unknown outdoor preacher in east end Montreal who had led him to personal faith. The themes and texts chosen were simple, direct, and evangelistic, with titles such as “Following Christ,” “Prayer,” “The Danger of Compromise,” and “The Christian’s Insurance.” He even spoke (pre-Westminster) of the “separated life” from the text in II Corinthians 6:17 favoured by fundamentalists:

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“Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord and touch not the unclean thing.” Another golden text was Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ.” The sermons reflect an approach that he would later label “pietistic.” By the time he graduated from McGill in 1934, sermon notes become more expansive and the themes more original. Pilate’s question “What then shall I do with Jesus, which is called Christ?” is a message frequently repeated in subsequent years. Its plea was strong and earnest, ending with the question: “What will we do? How shall we face this question? We cannot avoid it.”47 Attending Westminster Seminary made the content of his preaching more cerebral. The enthusiasm of fresh insights in his 1936 preaching is apparent. On 7 June of that year he states categorically that “in the Bible we find two sections, the Old and New Testaments. Many seem to think that this means that there are two means of salvation set forth in the Scripture. This, however, is not true. God has supplied one way for salvation and that was through faith in Christ.” He continued on a theme that first touched him at age fourteen: “Those who took God at His word and believed that He would send a son to take their punishment were declared justified, and as having paid the penalty for their sins.” Or again the next year, 1 August 1937, in Mille Isles and Côte St Gabriel, he preached on the subject of vocation: “In Scripture we find that there are two types of calling unto eternal life. There is the offer of the Gospel to all. The second ... is the call which is actually effectual in the elect.”48 The Calvinism is coming through. Stanford Reid could always, as a good teacher, make doctrinal complexities simple. In spite of Fryer’s advice, he never spoke down to his congregation. To the farmers of Côte St George on 30 September 1936, he preached on the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints using John 10:28: “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” In June and July of 1937, again in Mille Isles, he did a series on Christ as prophet, priest, and king. Another message that same summer described Christ propitiating the wrath of God on the cross: “Some today would have us believe that God had no righteous anger, but that He simply loved all men and if anybody would do what is right; or do his best then God would accept him. But that is not so.”49 Stanford Reid was never one to avoid hard topics. Reid demanded a lot from his congregations. They were, one has to assume, more literate and doctrinally knowledgeable than similar audiences today. He expected a high level of concentration during his preaching. In spite of this – or perhaps because of it – he was a popular speaker in high demand. The Lachute Watchman, reporting on a May 1938 service he conducted in Mille Isles, analysed his appeal: “He

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speaks fluently, handles a doctrinal question convincingly, and has a fine singing voice. He has inherited his father’s good old-fashioned Gospel views, as well as his ample frame.” In April 1938, just as he was about to take his final examinations, Stanford Reid was suddenly summoned home. His mother, in the Montreal General Hospital for minor surgery, had had a brain aneurysm and died on the operating table. At sixty years of age, she and W.D. were looking forward to a long and happy retirement. They were just back from Victoria, where they had wintered as W.D. supplied the pulpit for his brother Andrew. Seventy-two-year-old W.D., increasingly disabled by rheumatoid arthritis, had always assumed he would be taken first. “Why she was taken from me is a problem I cannot solve,” he would admit, and then quickly quote the line from the old hymn: “Sometime, sometime we’ll understand.” Daisy Stanford Reid was buried from Stanley Church and interred in Mount Royal Cemetery. Stanford Reid returned to complete his thesis and conclude his work for the Th.B. and the Th.M. degrees. For the next month he slept only fitfully, with constant images of his mother in his dreams. Life would never be the same for the family without Daisy Stanford.

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4 Setting Course Professionally and Maritally, 1938–1941 Credentialed Academically, Committed Matrimonially

In later life, as Stanford Reid looked back, the summer of 1938 seemed a dark and lonely time.1 It should not have been. He had graduated from Westminster Seminary with an impressive grade point average and received the Frank Stevenson award given the top student for further post-graduate studies. At the age of twenty-five, he had four academic degrees and was a published author. But his mother’s sudden death in April, which had initially energized him as he rushed back to Montreal to make all the funeral arrangements, left him emotionally drained and depleted. In his uncertain frame of mind, he looked for solace to religious faith. He returned for a fourth summer to the two small country congregations where he had been so well received and loved. Mille Isles and Côte St Gabriel were comprised mostly of Scots-Irish immigrants who had come to Canada at the same time as his own family had settled in Megantic County. The year before one family had paid him the ultimate compliment when they named their newborn son “Stanford.”2 They were a warm and caring people and their love was a balm for his troubled spirit. Twenty years later many stories were still being passed on in the community about his high jinks and youthful enthusiasms.3 Few of his sermons remain from the summer of 1938 – volume viii as Reid catalogued them – but those that were kept are filled with theological complexities that would have daunted a less loyal group. A sermon series explained the Calvinist ordo salutis or “order of salvation,” found at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans. The ordo salutis pro-

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vides a doctrinal summary of the Christian experience from effectual calling to regeneration, through faith and repentance, to justification, sanctification, and glorification. Each stage was meticulously explained by Reid. It was more than dogmatics: it provided consolation for those who felt their faith might be slipping away. Stanford Reid found comfort in his grief in the assurance that God would never let him go. In his sermon on the doctrine of justification, so instrumental in his own initiation into the faith, he stated emphatically: “We are accepted only as God’s children when we are declared free from the punishment of sin and accepted as righteous in His sight. Therefore we must first be justified from our sins.”4 In the message on sanctification Reid developed the theme of providence, highlighting Romans 8:28: “All things work together for good to the covenant people. Everything that enters into their lives is for their edification. No matter if sorrow or joy, trouble or blessing, yet it is all for the best spiritual welfare of God’s people. This should be a very comforting thought for all who are His.”5 Christian doctrine might be dull and dry for some, but for Stanford Reid, it was “the greatest drama ever staged.,” to use an expression of Dorothy Sayers he was later fond of quoting.6 And he not only succeeded in making it come alive for his audience —.in the summer of 1938 it was a personal lifeline. His brother Stewart was entering the McGill medical faculty that fall. His father was increasingly crippled by arthritis. In September 1938, as Stanford was about to return to Philadelphia, he persuaded Earl Robinson,7 who had spent the summer as student minister at Valcartier, Quebec, supervised by Uncle Allan, to stay on at 619 Victoria Avenue. Earl planned to study at Presbyterian College in order to qualify for ministry in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. For his room and board he would provide the muscle to get W.D. in and out of his wheelchair. In this way he supplemented Mrs Margaret MacLeod, W.D.’s regular housekeeper, who remained faithfully with him until the end in 1952. Robinson was the first of a series of such helpers, several of them preparing for ministry, among them Mariano DiGangi, with whom Stanford maintained lifelong links. Stanford Reid had been accepted for the Ph.D. program in medieval history at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. His first year there went so well that he was awarded the Leib Harrison Graduate Fellowship. The 15 April 1939 Montreal Star anticipated that he “will pursue his studies in history abroad.” With the outbreak of hostilities on 1 September, however, transatlantic travel for a noncombatant was out of the question. Reid would be forced to do his research on this side of the Atlantic.

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Fifteenth-century Scotland became Stanford Reid’s area of concentration. His interest in Scotland was axiomatic. His fascination with the roots of the Reformation went back to his studies with W.T. Waugh. Particularly significant in whetting his interest was a quotation from Professor J.H. Baxter of St Andrew’s University in an address in 1924 to the Scottish Church History Society. Baxter stated that the Reformation in Scotland could not be understood without a knowledge of the two centuries that preceded it. Reid cited Baxter’s remarks in their entirety at the beginning of his thesis: “The work of the medievalist is to understand and trace the development of those Romanist centuries that the whole process may be revealed, so to read and interpret symptoms, that he may depict, not only why the Reformation was inevitable as early as the time of James I or James II, but also why the Reformation took the form it did, and why, through the seventeenth century with its covenants to the nineteenth with its Disruption, the Reformed Church took the path it did, and how the path has led to what we are today.”8 Reid described fifteenth-century Scotland as “the period of transition from medieval to modern Scotland.” He found three components in the anti-papalism of the period. The first was the influence of Bible translator Wycliffe in Scotland through the Lollards. The second was the conciliar movement in Scotland: Scots had played a significant role at the 1439 council of Basle in deposing one pope and electing another. He inquired: did these councils undermine the papacy? The third component was economic development, the feudal assault on the church’s lands and revenues. Reid analysed previous historical interpretation of the period. The early chroniclers – Hector Boece, first principal of Aberdeen University, George Buchanan, Mary Queen of Scots’ antagonist, and Capuchin friar George Leslie – he dismissed, explaining that they were not “shining examples of historical accuracy.” Eyeing 500 years of interpretation, he concluded modestly, “In consequence it has been found necessary at times to reject the conclusions of some of even the most modern historians since they have occasionally been led astray by the early chronicles.” In his research, though he could not go overseas, Reid was fortunate in having in the University of Pennsylvania libraries, one of the most complete collections of medieval resource material, thanks to the zeal of Henry Charles Lea. In the introduction to the thesis, he expressed his appreciation for the availability of a “great volume of published Scottish medieval documents.” In the library were to be found whole sets of nineteenth-century publications by various learned societies

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such as the Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs and, more recently, the Scottish Text Society. Yet in spite of these publications, in working on the fifteenth century history of Scotland, one is actually blazing a trail through a tangled forest of fact and fiction, with the only known paths not infrequently going in the wrong direction. In the case of the present work this has necessitated the examination of all relevant theories in the light of documentary evidence. Such a practice, while at times tedious, has on some occasions produced results which the author feels demand a complete revision of earlier conclusions. When applied, the new interpretations have not infrequently furnished explanations for what were previously regarded as mysteriously irrational actions and events. Therefore, if the conclusions drawn in this study at first sight appear to be unusual, even unorthodox, it is hoped that the evidence will be carefully weighed before they are rejected.

He continued: The fact that many of the older interpretations of events have been considered faulty or inadequate, demanding new hypotheses, has necessitated the exercise of considerable caution in the expression of opinions. On this account no dogmatic statements have been made which cannot be proven absolutely on the basis of documents. A number of interpretations, founded on circumstantial evidence, have been offered, but although they are regarded as completely validated, they cannot be said to be proven without possible rejection. In such cases it has been thought advisable to use the terms ‘may have been,’ ‘apparently,’ etc., in order to avoid the conveyance of indubitable certainty.

In subsequent writing Reid would be criticized by reviewers for overuse of words like “might have been” or “apparently,” which they described leaps into unproven (and unprovable) conjectures. The completed thesis was not a long one by contemporary standards.9 It consisted of 174 pages in seven chapters of typed, doublespaced text with an appendix and a short bibliography. It began with the period before 1400, tracing Scottish relations with the papacy, then went on to explain how it was that early in the fifteenth century feudal anti-papalism became royal policy. Two further chapters contrasted the anti-papalism of the Earl of Douglas and the papalism of James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews. The final chapter was titled “The Revival and Victory of Anti-papalism.” Reid’s conclusion was that

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The Reformation in Scotland had many more elements in it than mere antipapalism. Nevertheless the anti-papal movement of the fifteenth century, beginning with the attempts of the nobility to control the church, and of the clergy to rule the church by the conciliar method, largely prepared the ground for the Protestant revolt. Before 1500 much of the work not done in England until after 1532, had already been accomplished in Scotland. Thus when Knox and his followers commenced their activities, papal authority among the nobles, the clergy and the common people had been so weakened, that it could offer little resistance to a determined attack. This goes a long way toward explaining the reformers’ striking and rapid success.

Medievalist Arthur Charles Howland,10 retired Henry Charles Lea Professor of medieval European history, was Reid’s thesis supervisor. He had joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1904 and retired at seventy in 1940. During Reid’s final year of graduate study, he was made honorary curator of the Henry Charles Lea Library. Henry Charles Lea was Howland’s mentor. Howland explored the same recesses of medieval ecclesiastical history as Lea, publishing a three-volume Materials Toward a History of Witchcraft in 1939. The others on Reid’s thesis committee were also well-published medieval scholars. Two were University of Pennsylvania faculty: John La Monte11 and Conyers Read.12 The other, William Edward Lunt,13 taught at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia. All four thesis advisers were medievalists but none was a specialist in Scottish studies, at the time a fairly esoteric subject in North America. When he defended his thesis, Stanford Reid would later boast that he had challenged the committee to substantiate failings in his research. For all of them, history north of the Tweed was terra incognita. Each time Reid reentered the United States at the border crossing nearest Montreal, Rouse’s Point, New York, he left a country at war and entered a nation still under the illusion that it could stay out of conflict. As with many Canadians in the United States, he found it necessary to explain to Americans life north of the forty-ninth parallel. An article of his in the New York magazine Events – The Monthly Review of World Affairs analysed the Canadian election of 26 March 1940. Reid attributed Liberal Mackenzie King’s victory over Conservative Robert Manion as being due to his skilful balancing act between the anti-war rhetoric of Premier Maurice Duplessis of Quebec and the Conservative complaint that the war had caught Canada unprepared and its response to the peril of the mother country had been grossly inadequate. “The Liberals, while not denying that they had made mistakes, urged that they had done passably well up to the present, and more important, they were presenting to the country a cabinet already

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chosen and with some experience in war activities. Dr Manion, on the contrary, had no experience in the conduct of public affairs for some time, and none knew who would be in his cabinet.”14 Reid was a loyal Canadian, but as a Quebecker, he was aware of wider issues English Canada would ignore at its peril. When Stanford Reid returned to Montreal from Philadelphia in the summer of 1940, neither politics nor thesis was uppermost in his mind. On 8 August the Montreal Star announced the engagement of William Stanford Reid to Priscilla Lee. Their marriage was to take place on the 24th of that month in St Lambert at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church where the bride’s father was minister. Though it was a short engagement, the couple had known each other almost from birth. Both their fathers were Presbyterian clergy, graduates of Presbyterian College, and staunch anti-Unionists. Each had spent most of their ministry in Montreal. Stanford and Priscilla had overlapped by two years during their studies at McGill, though she was five years older. There had been a clue that their collaboration might be more than professional in the introduction to The Church of Scotland in Lower Canada. In addition to Professor Fryer, his father, and Paul Woolley, Stanford had expressed thanks to “Miss Priscilla Lee, b.a., b.l.s., Librarian, Presbyterian College, Montreal, P.Q., who has rendered aid in proofreading and in preparation of the subject index.”15 On graduation from McGill in Arts in 1932 and from the School of Library Science in 1933, Priscilla Reid was appointed first librarian at Presbyterian College and then lecturer at the ymca Sir George Williams College, a post-secondary institution that provided alternative educational opportunities for working people. Similar as their backgrounds were, there were differences between the two that would become apparent over the years. Westmount, even in the Depression, was not St Lambert. Money, status and respectability were always important to Priscilla. Through Stanford’s parents’ links with evangelicalism, he had grown up with an expression of faith somewhat different from his bride. Henry Stewart Lee was stern, traditional, conservative, and culturally Presbyterian. Helena Lee did not share the wide horizons or the sunny laughter of Daisy Stanford. An only child, Priscilla was part of a small and self-contained family circle quite different from the outgoing and outspoken Reid clan. When Priscilla’s father died a year after the marriage, W.D. wrote in tribute: “In temperament and theology he was a thorough conservative in the best sense of that word. With all newfangled theology that sought, as he thought, to undermine the popular faith in God’s Word, he had not the slightest sympathy. His commission from heaven was

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‘Preach the Word’ and he preached it without discount, not only in word but by his godly example and Christian gentlemanliness.” Henry Stewart Lee was both son and brother-in-law of Presbyterian ministers. His father, Archibald Lee, was a Scots-born immigrant from Belfast, and an 1884 Presbyterian College graduate who served a variety of smaller churches across Canada, all for short periods of time. He was described as an “evangelical and forceful preacher,”16 “genial and unassuming, winning many friends; as a citizen, public spirited, and ready to assist in every good work; as a pastor, faithful in congregational and Presbyterial duties.”17 Henry Stewart Lee, Priscilla’s father, entered McGill in 1895. On graduation from Presbyterian College and ordination in 1902, he was called to the small Glengarry County community of Apple Hill, Ontario. While there he met Priscilla’s mother, Helena Edna Andrewina Willman, who lived across the Ottawa River in Calumet, qc. They were married in 1907 and their only child, Priscilla, named after her mother’s sister, was born the following year. Her grandfather, Edward Willman, an Ottawa Valley lumber merchant, headed a family of twelve, many of them childless, and all of whom doted on Priscilla.18 The Willmans were Methodists and maintained a strong sense of propriety as decent, respectable and God-fearing people. Meanwhile Lee’s sister, whom he had introduced to a fellow student at Presbyterian College, brought through marriage a third minister into the family circle. Rev. C.A. Hardy served for only seven years before his untimely death left two sons fatherless, and a charge on the family. The boys’ grandfather took early retirement to care for them, moving with the widowed daughter to Vankleek Hill, Ontario. Priscilla’s father was called to Fairmount Church in Montreal in 1911. At Union, having seen the congregation grow to 600 members, he was asked to rebuild a minority congregation in the Toronto suburb of Wychwood. Five years later he returned to Montreal and for a decade served St Andrew’s Church, St Lambert. The church, having built a new sanctuary just before the Depression, experienced severe financial hardship in the 1930s. Henry Stewart Lee some times failed to receive his salary, and the family was dependent on Priscilla’s meagre income from her librarian and teaching duties. Only after his death was back salary finally repaid.19 The experience left Priscilla with a taste for financial independence. She discovered early on that, like her cousins in Vankleek Hill, she had an ability to invest and make money. Priscilla Reid inherited a sense of duty and a loyalty to the Presbyterian Church in Canada. She was protective of her privacy and not given to sharing intimacies with strangers. As an only child of the manse she learned to please, to say and do the right thing, and to keep

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up appearances. In her diary in 1948 there is a typical entry: “Dinner was a great success. The table simply sparkled and shone in the candlelight, owing to the fact that I used quite a bit of cut glass as well as silver.”20 Priscilla Reid was meticulously groomed. Her clothes were tailored. When finances became less of a problem to Stanford Reid the first thing he did was go out and buy her a fur coat. Priscilla Reid was a woman of considerable intellectual ability. Stanford encouraged her to be her own woman, respected her highly, and was proud of her achievements despite the embarrassing way in which he would sometimes appear to put her down in public. She was shrewd in business, partnering with her friend Mary Parks in “Les Filles du Roi,” a sachet-making operation. Professionally, in addition to being a librarian, she was a trained historian. The two skills combined as she helped Stanford with research and compiled indices for his books, as well as serving as his meticulous proofreader. She developed a commitment to preserving and recovering the past and gave leadership in historical restoration. The Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Society (wms)21 was a major interest and she provided leadership both locally (in Guelph as well as Montreal) and nationally. Priscilla Reid was also active in her sorority, Gamma Phi Beta, and was president in 1959. There were, however, limitations to her willingness to get involved in women’s organizations. “I enjoy social gatherings but I hate women’s meetings,” she confided in her diary. “There is so much useless chatter.”22 There is no doubt that her marriage to Stanford was a love match. During their first year of marriage one of Stanford Reid’s contemporaries23 at Westminster Seminary marvelled at the way they showed their affection for each other in public, with hand holding and arms wrapped around each other during church, something regarded as unseemly in that era. In her diary six years after their wedding, on a cold, late winter day of sleet and rain after “her Stan” left for the university, Priscilla noted her feelings in her diary: “As I watched him going down the street, looking so big and handsome, I’m afraid my heart missed a beat. He is a wonderful husband.”24 And a year later: “Stan is one husband in a thousand!” On 24 August 1940, in an evening ceremony, as one of his final acts as minister at St Lambert, Henry Stuart Lee married Priscilla to Stanford Reid, assisted by the groom’s father and Rev. Ascah, who had married her parents thirty-three years earlier. Priscilla came down the aisle on the arm of her uncle, Major Sam Willman of Calumet. Stewart Reid was his brother’s best man, and the groomsmen were all friends from Stanley Church and Westmount High School.25 It was wartime and money was scarce in the bride’s family, so the reception

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Stanford Reid and Priscilla Reid on their wedding day, 24 August 1941 (courtesy Dr E.A. Stewart Reid)

was held in the church hall. Only Daisy Reid was missing, a fact noted in all the newspaper accounts of the event. The honeymoon was a single weekend. The week after the wedding, the newly married couple travelled to Philadelphia. There they set up their first home at 717 Old Lancaster Road, Bryn Mawr. 1940 was also a year of decision about the future. Stanford had alternatives: academia or ordination, the United States or Canada. He was being courted by various American colleges, but the Presbyterian Church in Canada had been less than welcoming. The 1940 General Assembly had said that if he wanted to be a minister in that denomination he must take “a course under the direction of the Senate of either Knox or Montreal College on the doctrine and polity of The Presbyterian Church, and to pass an examination thereon which will be considered satisfactory by the Senate and the Board of Education.”

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He was also required to provide “a written pledge that if admitted to the ministry of The Presbyterian Church in Canada [he would] serve in a spirit of loyalty to this Church and its institutions, including its theological colleges.” This defensiveness on the part of the denominational Board of Education went back to Stanford Reid’s abrupt termination of his studies at Presbyterian College in late September 1934. His father, disappointed that the school from which he had graduated and in which he had later taught was not the one his son could attend, wrote a diatribe on the colleges in an independent magazine called Bible Christianity, edited by Montreal minister and Westminster graduate J. Marcellus Kik.26 Frank W. Beare complained to Kik about “Dr Reid’s vicious attack on the Colleges in your June issue.” It appears that W.D. had quoted lectures at Knox or Presbyterian College as stating that “John’s Gospel and Epistles were forgeries written in the latter part of the second century.” “Only four of Paul’s Epistles were genuine,” was another inflammatory remark that W.D. repeated. Frank Beare, who had been appointed by the 1935 General Assembly as the professor of church history and the history of religions at Presbyterian College, defended the colleges vociferously. “This paragraph of Dr Reid’s is surely the product of his own superheated imagination; for so far as I know, no human soul ever put forward such a fantastic notion on this subject as he boldly puts into the mouth of his professor.” He concluded: “Dr Reid may have no more sense of responsibility than to make such wild and false allegations, but I do think that your paper should think twice about printing them. Or does your idea of Bible Christianity include the right to publish libel?”27 W.D.’s attack and the furore it generated could hardly have improved the chances for Stanford Reid’s application for ordination. Negotiations were proceeding rapidly with the History Department of the University of Maryland when word came from Montreal on 27 February 1941 of the sudden death of Henry Lee in the Montreal General Hospital. He had only been at Fairmount Taylor Church for four months, the congregation a merger of W.D. Reid’s Taylor Church and his own Fairmount Church. The suddenness of his death, while Priscilla was in the United States, was very difficult not only for her but also for his widow. As well, it plunged marginal Fairmount Taylor Church into financial crisis. Clergy, in short supply after 1925, had become even scarcer as many had signed up for chaplaincy duty in the Canadian armed forces. Where could Fairmount Taylor Church find a minister? As the elders of the congregation discussed the crisis the name of W. Stanford Reid, son and son-in-law of former ministers, surfaced as a

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possibility. The Board of Education of the Presbyterian Church was asked to reconsider their curt response to Stanford a year earlier, and Reid allowed his name to go forward to the Assembly a second time. On this occasion, the Board recommended to the Assembly that “before [he] be taken on trials for license by the Presbytery [he] satisfy the Faculty of the Presbyterian College, Montreal, in the matter of the doctrine and polity of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.” Frank Morley, his father’s successor at Stanley Church, moved in amendment “that the conditions set forth in the recommendation be deleted, and that the Presbytery of Montreal be granted leave to take him on trial for license.” The amendment carried and Stanford was approved for ordination as a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. His stipend was to be $1900, inadequate to live on. Fortunately, McGill agreed to appoint him as sessional lecturer for $900. Without that added income, Stanford Reid would have been unable to serve the church, a point he later often made in defending his dual track career. The opportunity to lecture at McGill came as a direct result of the intervention of the new principal, F. Cyril James. On 3 July 1941, James wrote to Reid in Bryn Mawr, advising him that although Professor Adair, the incoming department chairman, was away in the United States and although the appointment had not yet been approved by the board of governors, “I think you can assume with a very low probability of error that you will be asked to lecture at McGill University during the coming year.” James concluded by saying he looked forward to meeting Reid in early August and sending best personal wishes. When Adair returned to Montreal, he was not at all pleased,28 and had he been present, Reid would never have secured the appointment. As one of Reid’s graduate students, who later taught at McGill, said, “Adair was basically anti-religious and did not think that Stanford was up to the standards of the department.”29 His attitude may have had more to do with the fact that Reid’s doctorate was from an American university. The previous year, Adair had criticized the Ph.D. in the United States as “very largely a professional degree, qualifying its recipients to lecture to college students ... real research gets pushed into the background; some of the work done for the degree is good, most of it is very mediocre, and far too much is thoroughly poor.”30 F. Cyril James was appointed principal of McGill University by the board of governors on 1 November 1939 following the brief term of the American Lewis Douglas, who had departed for New York to be president of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. An Englishman, Cyril James had taught economics since 1924 at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He had only recently been given leave of absence to accept a two-year appointment as direc-

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tor of the School of Commerce at McGill. The Montreal Star sniffed: “Yesterday’s announcement of his appointment as Principal of McGill came as a distinct surprise. Since the announcement last summer of Dr Douglas’s approaching retirement the names of many distinguished Canadians have been mentioned as his possible successor. It was believed that a Canadian-born educationist and probably a man who had been connected with McGill for some time, would be chosen.” Stanford Reid heard that news of the appointment had not gone down well in Montreal. As a McGill graduate studying at the University of Pennsylvania, he sent off a letter to the McGill Daily that was printed on 14 November. Its importance to the future of Stanford Reid is so great it is quoted in full. One of the main topics of conversation, around the campus of the University of Pennsylvania is the loss of Dr Cyril James from the Wharton School of Commerce. On every side one hears people bemoaning his leaving while at the same time congratulating McGill on its good sense. The feeling of regret comes from both the faculty and the student body. They all feel that they have suffered a personal loss. One incident of some weeks ago will show why this is so. Dr James was in Philadelphia on business, and during his stay one of his students came up for her Ph.D. final exams. So in order to encourage her he took off enough time from other matters to appear at the examination. This has been the talk of the campus for the past few days. And when one of the librarians discovered me reading a Montreal Star with the new principal’s photo in it she asked me for it. This I did and it is now in the Ph.D. student’s possession, much to her delight. Such actions as this explain the emphasis which nearly all students who know Dr James place on his friendliness. He is never too busy or too much occupied with other things to be approached by a member of the student body with his problems. One Wharton student said that he felt that he had really lost a friend when Dr James left. But not only has Dr James been beloved by the student body for his friendliness, he has been admired as teacher. I have heard quite a number of those who have sat under his instruction say that they could not wish a more inspiring teacher. When a student says this, it really means something. The praise which one hears of the late head of Wharton School, however is not confined to the student body. The faculty members, both of his own and other divisions of the university universally express their regret that Penn. has lost him. While talking the other day with some of the professors in my own department, History, the opinion was expressed that we had lost one of our ablest scholars. “The Wharton School,” said one man, “can ill spare such a man. Dr James understands the needs of such scholarship and is thus a really great educationalist. Any university to which he goes will certainly receive a tremendous stimulus to advance.”

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Dr James’ gifts, however, do not stop there, for he has made quite a name for himself as an administrator. Such a combination is somewhat rare. On this score many feel that the U. of P. has suffered a serious setback when he left. Everyone agrees that if McGill wanted an administrator and executive she has certainly attained her object. Then, too, like the students, all the faculty members with whom I have discussed his appointment speak of Dr James as one of the friendliest men they have met. In a university where there are over one thousand instructors of various orders it is unusual to find a man so universally liked personally, especially by men of other faculties. But in Dr James’s case one hears nothing but universal praise for him as a man as well as a scholar and executive. Dr Linglebach, Dean of the College of Arts summed it up when he said: “McGill by obtaining Dr James’s services has taken probably our most outstanding and ablest faculty member.” Yet although there is regret that Dr James has left, it is felt that he has had opened up before him a field for greater opportunities. His undoubted gifts will now have greater opportunity than ever to display themselves in enhancing the reputation of the Red and White instead of the Red and Blue. One thought which seems to be running through many professors’ minds is that perhaps this may lead to greater co-operation between the two universities. As an alumnus of McGill I have been very glad to hear this hope expressed on many sides. It will be a great day when this is brought to pass. Penn. still feels her loss and will continue to do so, but all who know Dr James wish him well in his new field of work. They hope that he will do great things for McGill in every possible way, and they are sure that he will.

“Treat him well McGill!” Reid urged as he signed off with “W.S. Reid, Arts ’34.” Not only would McGill treat F. Cyril James well, but F. Cyril James would see that McGill treated W. Stanford Reid well. On 19 September 1941, in Fairmount Taylor Presbyterian Church, Stanford Reid was ordained to the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in Canada by the Presbytery of Montreal and recognized as an ordained missionary. Allan Reid participated as Superintendent of Missions, and W.D. preached the sermon, the last time he would ever be in a pulpit. The next day the Montreal Gazette headlined that “Son Takes Over Pulpit First Held By Father.” Other congenial friends such as Quincy McDowell of Princeton Seminary class of 1927, minister of Verdun’s First Church, and J. Marcellus (Jake) Kik, a member of Westminster Seminary’s first graduating class in 1930, were present. For the next decade Kik, McDowell and Reid would form the nucleus of a noisy minority in the Presbytery of Montreal. The children’s mission band, named for Daisy Stanford Reid, sang.

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J. Marcellus Kik (courtesy Rev. Dr Frank Kik)

That same week McGill University announced that W. Stanford Reid, who had graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania “with great distinction” in the spring, had been appointed parttime or sessional lecturer in history. The appointment coincided with the retirement of the chairman of the department, Kingsford Professor C.E. Fryer, Reid’s supervisor for his M.A. thesis. Stanford immediately took over two of Fryer’s courses: History 5, “English Political and Industrial Life Since 1815,” and a fourth year course, History 6, “History of Europe 1789–1939.” Stanford and Priscilla had come home. They were anglophone Quebeckers not only by birth but now by their decision to return in spite of opportunities elsewhere. They resumed life in Montreal as though they had never been away. Priscilla became secretary of the

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Presbyterian Ministers’ Wives Association and a member of the Montreal Women’s Missionary Society executive. Stanford returned to McGill as lecturer while maintaining the family tradition of active participation in the life of the Presbytery of Montreal. They resumed old friendships and were with family and friends. They were back in Canada. They were home.

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5 Young Pastor and Part-time Academic, 1941–1951 Crosscurrents in Quebec and McGill in the Forties

Quebec’s politics in the 1940s were a subject of considerable fascination for Stanford Reid. As a Quebecker himself, he was all too aware of the two solitudes – French and English – described by fellow McGill faculty member Hugh MacLennan in his 1945 novel of that name. He read Le Devoir as well as the Montreal Star and Gazette. Not only was he an historian of the past, he set about to take an active part in the history that unfolded before him on his return to Montreal. He did this by writing to the newspapers frequent (and often controversial) letters to the editor. Through his church connections, and particularly as chairman of the Life and Work Committee of the Presbytery of Montreal, there were few issues in Quebec that slipped by without a comment from Stanford Reid. The first of the major events in Quebec in the 1940s was the plebiscite on conscription. Many francophones opposed compulsory conscription into the Allied forces, taking a more detached view of the conflict overseas. An unbridgeable gulf developed between those eager to fight for king and country and others who saw no need to get involved. Stanford became embroiled in the controversy through an unusual turn of events that was fully played up in the papers. On Sunday evening, 10 April 1942, worshippers gathering at Fairmount Taylor Presbyterian Church were startled to find its doors, walls, and notices plastered with small stickers advocating a “Non” vote in the conscription plebiscite, then a week away. The material, featuring a prominent “X” in the “Non” box of a voting paper, was all in French, so the effort was not so much informative as inflammatory.

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Also on the sicker was a warning: “Si vous voulez éviter la conscription, voici où vous ferez votre croix au plebiscite du 27 avril.” (If you want to avoid conscription, here is where you should place your cross on the 27 April plebiscite.) The church, at the corner of Masson and Cartier Streets in Montreal’s east end, was in a traditionally anglophone neighbourhood but was rapidly becoming francophone. The incident exacerbated unarticulated ethnic tensions already present, and Fairmount Taylor parishioners reacted angrily. The Montreal Star reported the next day that “churchgoers tore down most of the stickers and today it is understood that steps are being taken to protect the building ... Apprized of the situation, a strong squad of c.p.r. men assumed the task of protecting the church last evening and Police Director Dufresne said today that he had given orders to deal effectively with such cases of vandalism.” Results of the 27 April plebiscite were as anticipated. Eighty per cent of Canadians outside Quebec supported conscription, 72.9% of Quebeckers voted “Non.” Montreal’s mayor, the flamboyant Camillien Houde, an admirer of Mussolini, had been arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police a year earlier and was still in an Ontario internment camp. Houde, mayor for twenty-six years and regarded as fascist, encouraged defiance of registration for military service under the National Resources Mobilization Act. Ottawa was feeling increasingly threatened. In the existing wartime emergency the government had assumed powers of appointment and tight control of industrial employment. So arose a second issue, one which Stanford Reid, as a chronicler of the Reformation, felt very strongly about: freedom of conscience. He accused the repressive Quebec government of infringing on freedom of conscience in religious matters. The 1937 Padlock Law had given the government, led by Premier Maurice Duplessis, sweeping powers without appeal to interfere in any activity deemed to be bolshevik or communist. As the war continued, many Quebeckers felt their freedoms were increasingly threatened. Frank R. Scott, a professor of constitutional law at McGill, who had opposed entering the war, was a prominent civil libertarian. Stanford Reid and Frank Scott made strange bedfellows, but Reid agreed there was a threat though his concern was religious freedom given Premier Duplessis’ strong identification with the Roman Catholic Church. “The battle for religious liberty,” he wrote to the Montreal Gazette 28 July 1942, “was fought in the Old Land three hundred years ago, and in this country the question was settled by 1850. But the problem has arisen again.”1 Two years later he expressed similar concerns. This time the provocation came from British Columbia: on 20 March 1944 a ccf2 mem-

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ber of Parliament from that province, Angus MacInnis,3 introduced in the House of Commons a bill amending the criminal code to forbid a public verbal statement or publication exposing anyone of any race or creed “to contempt, discrimination, unrest or disorder among the people ...” The Montreal Gazette took issue, stating in an editorial: “We doubt [Mr MacInnis] or anyone else can legislate tolerance into our lives. It is the wrong approach.” Stanford Reid, in a letter to the editor, agreed. It was, he wrote, “a dangerous amendment. This bill is an exhibition of our country’s predicament today. We are beginning to see that many of our leaders, particularly of one party, care actually very little for democratic liberty. This is the way in which totalitarianism always begins its effect, and we see this is happening here while our men and women are overseas striving to purchase freedom with their lives.” One reader, George Tomkins, wrote to the Gazette and asked Stanford pointedly: “Why were you and your church friends silent when the Padlock Law was passed? What does Mr Reid want to say against any race or religion that this bill might prevent him from saying? Would Reid approve the rants of Baptist minister T.T. Shields? The rest of us need only continue to worship in our own way and cooperate with people of all races as best we can, as we have always done.”4 Reid raised the same issue again at the September 1944 meeting of the Presbytery of Montreal. In his capacity as chairman of the Life and Work Committee, he asked the Presbytery to commend Quebec Senator Télèsphore-Damien Bouchard for alerting Canadians to the danger to civil liberties posed by the Ordre de Jacques-Cartier (or La Patente). Bouchard had blamed this secret order – right-wing and church-dominated – for a whispering campaign that resulted in his being fired as the head of Quebec Hydro by Premier Duplessis. Presbytery, approving Reid’s recommendation, called on its members “to be vigilant and watchful at all times, lest before we are aware we lose our rights as British subjects and as Christians. Moreover the Presbytery would call upon our legislatures to take care that they do not overstep the limits of their authority by curtailing the freedoms which are ours by right, and for which we are fighting today.” When this was reported, there was immediate reaction. One Gazette reader wrote,“ What a gloomy, narrow, soul-shrinking world this is for the Presbyterians if they really believe this, their Presbytery’s opinion! What a prospect is offered to us! What a hope for Canadian unity! In all sincerity I ask, must there not be certain limits to freedom of speech?”5 Reid, in response, reiterated his position, questioning the wisdom of “silencing all discussion because of perhaps a few abusive controversialists.” Reference had been made to T.T. Shields and his anti-Roman Catholic diatribes. Reid refused to defend Shields but said

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that muzzling public expressions of opinion “would not help tolerance, nor would it be an act of charity.”6 “One of [Presbyterianism’s] central tenets has been the Kingship of Christ to whom we owe first allegiance. We therefore, must speak against evil and proclaim that which is good. On such a basis as that alone, can democracy survive.” The third issue, a defining one in the creation of the new Quebec, was the Asbestos Strike of 1949. This grève, or strike, of 5000 workers challenged the three power bases of Quebec society: the anglophone managerial class, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Quebec political establishment. It anticipated the Quiet Revolution of a decade later and was the first time the voice of future prime minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau was heard nationally. The walkout started on 14 February 1949, and by 7 May, when Stanford wrote the Montreal Gazette, opinion in the province was being polarized. His letter was risky. The Town of Mount Royal Presbyterian Church, which he then pastored, was full of young representatives of the anglo management elite. On the other side, the francophone press idealized him as a social progressive and a friend of the oppressed Quebeçois labourer. In his letter he contrasted the English and French press reports. In English newspapers, reflecting the views of the provincial minister of labour, the Quebec police, and the Johns Manville Asbestos Company, “the strikers are nothing but a group of discontented, murderous thugs who are opposing a gentle and benevolent company.” In 20 April Le Devoir Reid read that the issue was silicosis and the incidence of tuberculosis among the school children of Thetford Mines. Thetford Mines was not far from Leeds and he knew the area well. “While one cannot condone violence, yet when faced with a situation such as this, one wonders that there has not been violence a long time ago.” He urged the provincial government to come in and protect the workers. “It would also seem only the fair thing that the English language newspapers should give both sides of the story, even though it should bring Mr Duplessis some unpopularity.” Le Devoir picked up Reid’s letter, expressing appreciation to “le réverend W. Stanford Reid” as a Gazette reader who had the courage to complain about its bias.7 Le Devoir particularly commended Reid’s appeal to the provincial government to enforce a settlement and agreed with him that the English press should be more even-handed and less deferential to Premier Duplessis. Pierre Elliott Trudeau – whose oratory at the strike site earned him the sobriquet “Saint Joseph” by the miners – later described the asbestos grève as “a turning point in the entire religious, political, social and economic history of the Province of Quebec.”8 Stanford Reid was one anglophone who was not afraid to be identified with the strikers.

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At one point during the war, Stanford entered an enlistment office to volunteer for service overseas, feeling that he was not fulfilling his patriotic duty.9 As a child, he had a fascination for his Sea Cadet uniform. His brother, Stewart, after graduating in medicine from McGill in 1942, served first at Camp Borden. Then in July of 1943 he was posted overseas to the 14th Canadian General Hospital. Stanford also wished to do his part, but the recruitment officer in charge, on hearing that he was not only a minister but a university lecturer as well, told him that he was already serving his country to the limit of his ability. Stanford went home satisfied. Fairmount Taylor Church began to prosper. Reid’s house-to-house visitation commenced10 as soon as he was ordained, and by spring, like his father before him, he had covered every block within the neighbourhood of the church. Protestant and Catholic, French- and Englishspeaking alike, everyone received a friendly knock on the door and an invitation to come to church, in either French or English, depending on the language in which he was greeted. Reports in the press about annual congregational meetings show continuing improvement. In 1943 it was “Receipts 61% higher at Fairmount Taylor” as debts had been reduced and forty new members received. In 1944 another record year was reported, with forty more members received, bank notes burned, and new leadership appointed. Music was never one of Stanford’s emphases in church work, but the choir at Fairmount Taylor had one thirteen-year-old who would make a name for herself. In her early teens world-renowned contralto Maureen Forrester11 served her musical apprenticeship there, as Stanford would subsequently note with pride. Reid’s preaching at Fairmount Taylor established certain patterns that remained throughout life. His very first sermon was from the Old Testament.12 The familiar verse “Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit” became “A Contrast in Spiritual Dynamics.” By November he had struck what was to be a recurring note: “The Christian in the World of Today.”13 “In the world of today if we are to have a proper outlook on the world it must be really Christian. We cannot have a sort of camouflaged Christian outlook.” It was a time for a prophetic word. The next spring he developed a series on “The Old Testament Prophets Speak to Us,” choosing a significant theme for each. He continued his wary relationship with the McGill Christian Fellowship. The McGill Daily quoted him at a McGill Christian Fellowship fireside on 25 November 1943. In a direct evangelistic appeal, he stated that “It is the duty of the Christian to bring the Gospel to others, and thus bring peace to men and to the nations. But first we must have that peace within ourselves.”

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In the fall of 1944 Stanford Reid was approached about commencing services in the rapidly growing area north of Outremont called the Town of Mount Royal. At the time, its population was only 6,900 and almost exclusively anglophone, indeed so English that its streets were laid out as a Union Jack. The town quickly became known by its English initials tmr. Three men,14 each of them friends going back to childhood and youth, approached Reid about starting Presbyterian services there. tmr was becoming a place for the next generation of people brought up in Westmount. Stanford and Priscilla found the community congenial. Thirty-eight people attended the first service on 5 November 1944, in the tmr town hall. For the next few months, Stanford would preach at Fairmount Taylor on Sunday morning and evening, and in the afternoon in the Town of Mount Royal. The Presbytery of Montreal met on 13 February 1945 and received two requests from Stanford Reid: that a new church in the Town of Mount Royal be established, and that his resignation from Fairmount Taylor be accepted so he could become organizing pastor for the new congregation. The motion to create the first church in the Presbytery in almost twenty years did not go unopposed. A veteran minister of a downtown church was not happy.15 He complained that Stanford had “not consulted the older members of the Presbytery.” It turned out that one of the families in his congregation, resident in tmr, had already requested a certificate of transfer to the fledgling cause. Two other elderly ministers16 stood up to defend the establishment of the new church and the request, after further debate, was approved. Stanford was enthusiastic about the prospect of the new challenge. Perhaps a new congregation would be a place to create a whole new Presbyterian culture, centred on a profound and life-redirecting spiritual experience such as he had at the age of fourteen. tmr Presbyterian Church could set a new standard and break out of the stultifying conformity and conventionality of Montreal Presbyterianism. On 18 May 1945 the congregation met to inscribe in a charter these principles as presented by their founding minister. At its fiftieth anniversary, the occasion would be described as “a date much referred to later.”17 The congregation endorsed his revolutionary concept, which was laid out in two sections: 1. That as far as possible the Presbyterian Church, Town of Mount Royal, shall be supported financially by the free-will offerings of the people, and that no attempt shall be made to raise money by commercial means. 2. That with regard to certain activities such as dancing, the playing of cards and games of chance, whatever moral and ethical views we may hold concern-

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ing them as recreations for individuals, the Session feels that permission for them under church auspices would be unwise; would lead only to conflict and division, and would tend to turn the Church into a recreation society, rather than the Church of Christ. Therefore, it is resolved that such activities shall not be permitted under the auspices of any of the church organizations.

At tmr Stanford Reid visioned a profound break with traditional church life. The church was not just a community rallying point, a glorified service club with a dollop of religion on top, a place to socialize and nothing more. It was a “company of the committed,” an “incendiary fellowship,” a “revolutionary cell,” to use only a few of the new concepts of church life that were being articulated in the 1950s as an attempt to end what was described as “the suburban captivity of the church.” Stanford Reid, working during the week in an environment in which there were many “cultured despisers of Christianity” – to use Kierkegaard’s expression – and seeing a new generation coming up much more secular than any that had gone before, wanted to restore the cutting edge of the Gospel. It was a revolutionary concept. One of his teenagers at tmr church had such an encounter. She recalled: I met Stanford first when friends dragged me unwillingly to a Young People’s meeting in Mount Royal. As Stanford talked, suddenly there were things I wanted to know. I didn’t know him, and I thought he might regard my questions as stupid, but he listened and answered, as he always did. I never heard him sidestep a question or belittle a questioner. Add to that the fact that he was never boring, and you will understand how the young people in the congregation loved him. From that first moment, he started me on the way to changing from being a ‘sort of’ Christian to a real one. His teaching from those early days, particularly a head-to-head encounter with the Westminster Confession, has stood me in good stead all my life.18

On the night of his induction, as the minister of the fledgling church, Reid received a telegram from one of his Stanley friends who had become a charter member:19 “First two years will be very difficult but always remember what your father did under like circumstances stop We believe the chip off old block is as good as the older gentleman stop I join others in giving my support and wishing you every success in seeing the job through with your energetic age spiritual inspiration organization ability educational standard and intestinal fortitude.” Stanford Reid would need all those qualities. Starting a church even in that responsive and expansive time immediately after the Second World War – one could say particularly a church such as he envisioned it –

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would not be easy. Nevertheless, at the first annual meeting held in February of 1946, a good year was reported. There was a cash balance after paying the minister’s salary without help from any outside source. Four organizations had been established: the Women’s Missionary Society, a Sunday school, a Young People’s Society, and the Boys Brigade. It was a promising start. After agitating for some time against the cbc’s refusal to allow an evening church broadcast “even though the Montreal [Presbytery Life and Work] Committee offered to pay full commercial rates,” Reid began a program of his own over independent radio station ckvl Verdun in 1947. The “Christian News Analysis” (Reid’s own choice for a name) came on air each Sunday morning at eight. Reid explained that “it is felt by many that such a programme is greatly needed in this world of chaotic thinking and acting.” He was trying new approaches for the unchurched. A sermon series on “Revolutionary Christianity” developed various themes such as “release from the bondage of human tradition” and “salvation from human disintegration.” In those years following Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the spectre of a mushroom cloud hanging over the world, it was a timely message. The fledgling tmr congregation was growing slowly but steadily. On Easter Sunday morning in 1947 there were eighty in attendance at Dunrae Gardens School, the temporary meeting place for the congregation until a sanctuary could either be built or, as it turned out, bought.20 Throughout the war, Stanford Reid maintained his interest in British life and politics. Teaching British history was at times difficult for someone who had only visited the country once at the age of eleven, twenty-one years earlier. In December 1942, he addressed the McGill League of Nations branch on the Beveridge Report, whose implementation was to transform British society. He proceeded in his talk to analyse what these changes would be and, given hindsight, was remarkably prescient in his presentation. Unable to get to England for research, in the meantime he focused on a project related to his summer mission field in Mille Isles, the records of the seigneury of Mille Îles. The addition of an “s” in the spelling of the Laurentian community’s name as “Isles” was deliberate if not defiant. The first Scots-Irish settlers in the 1830s had borrowed the name of their new community from the seigneury to the south. Mille Îles seigneury, eighty-one acres, was staked out in 1683. Its French and Roman Catholic character had changed after 1815 as English-speaking immigrants settled there. Some intermarried with local francophones, explaining why even today many have English names. Swiss and Irish Protestants followed. The area seethed with sedition

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and revolt. St Eustache, the leading town in the seigneury, became a centre for Louis-Joseph Papineau and the Rebellion of 1837 – fertile ground for historical inquiry. As Reid noted, “This seigneurie was different from the others in one respect. It was one of the few to be settled almost entirely during the British regime.”21 His work on the Mille Îles seigneury never developed into the book he had planned.22 The war ended and passage to England was booked. A grant came from the American Philosophical Society, and in late June of 1947 Stanford and Priscilla Reid sailed out of Montreal on the liner Aquitania. The tmr community newspaper noted that the Reids would be guests of the Earl and Countess of Moray, “Dr Reid’s cousins,” at Darnaway Castle. The grant was given so that he could research on the life of Robert Barton, a fourteenth-century merchant adventurer whom he had first encountered in studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Even on his travels, Reid found time to write to the editor of Edinburgh’s Evening Dispatch to express an opinion. Observing the decline of religion in Scotland, he offered a remedy: “What Scotland needs, if she is to reassert her nationality, is a real spiritual revival.”23 Such a revival for him could only be “a return to Calvinism”: “When I speak of Calvinism I do not mean that Restoration cartoon which is the usual concept but the real Calvinism which emphasizes the fact that God is the God of Creation, Providence, and Redemption; the Calvinism which made Scotland one of the strongest forces for good which this world has seen.” Perhaps as a Canadian “whose forefathers left Scotland around 1830 but always kept up the old Scottish traditions” he might be “excused a little chauvinism.” He made a similar point in a report in the tmr community newspaper: “Something must be done to change this country’s present drift.”24 The trip provided many ideas for after-dinner speeches when he returned. Service groups such as the Quebec Drug Salesman’s Association heard his impressions of Britain after a summer’s exposure: the British were “leaving more and more of [their] problems to the government for solution,” he lamented. Further trips to Europe followed during the next two summers. In 1948 he went to the Continent, “where records still exist of Scotland’s early leadership in matters of trade.” In 1949 the Reids revisited Scotland, working in the Scottish Record Office in Edinburgh. Stanford was invited to preach, mainly in pulpits of the Free Church of Scotland, a denomination he found very compatible. In that denomination’s Monthly Record he wrote: “It was a relief to sit and hear the faithful exposition of the Scriptures given in the Free Kirk services.”25 The editor warmed to this unsolicited commendation: “We are encouraged, as we tread our lone way, to have this word of appreciation from a fellow-Calvinist from across the Atlantic.”26

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In July 1948 McGill University announced two academic appointments: Group of Seven artist Arthur Lismer and Stanford Reid were each promoted. Reid became assistant professor of history. An article he had written in Church History prompted an appreciative letter from Principal Cyril James: it had “helped to delight the otherwise weary hours of a journey to Ottawa yesterday. I think that you have made your case well and restored what always seemed to me an unbalance in the usual accounts of the Scottish Reformation but I must say that I am delighted at the ingenious way in which you explain the part-time piracy of Scottish merchants on the high seas as a part of the sharpening of bourgeois wits and the development of middle class cosmopolitanism.”27 Stanford Reid’s ministry at the Town of Mount Royal Church was coming to an end. He had brought the church from a charter membership of forty to 160 in six years. When the matter of a permanent site was settled, he felt that he could honourably move on. The church was developing in ways other than he had hoped for and the somewhat confining and bourgeois atmosphere of the town, “English and stuffy” as one person described it, was beginning to grate. The search for a home for the Town of Mount Royal Presbyterian Church had been going for some years. Renting schools was not giving it the visibility needed for growth. As early as May 1947, “a request was made for getting underway with a new building” because “the growth of the Town from 1935 has been exceedingly heavy and the progress of our Congregation since its inception leaves no doubt that a building is needed as speedily as possible.” It took two years before there was any progress. The tmr United Church, relocating to a larger facility, offered their building for $55,000. This seemed not only too expensive but also unjust: before 1925 it had been the Presbyterian church. Haggling continued for over a year until $30,000 was agreed on as sale price. On 9 September 1951, after substantial renovations, the Presbyterian church in the Town of Mount Royal was dedicated. At the close of the meeting, the elders at Reid’s final meeting with them minuted their thanks: “Mr Cummings expressed the sentiments of the whole session when he moved a vote of thanks to Dr and Mrs W. Stanford Reid for the fine work they had done in the congregation and community in general. He wished them every success in their future endeavours.”28 Presbytery gave him a warm commendation for his work in tmr as it accepted his resignation. His leadership had been “able and conscientious.” He had established a strong, theologically informed, and highly committed congregation. Stanford Reid was more guarded in

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his assessment of his ministry. At the dedication of their new building he asked: “What is a successful church?” In a time when the church was socially popular but culturally compromised he sounded a strong warning. “The size of the church whether large or small does not indicate the successfulness of the church. It may grow physically or it may not. The important thing is that it grows spiritually. If it does, it will then become more truly all the time a dwelling of God. It will be a place or it will be a group of people on which God manifests His dwelling by the spiritual development of His people, and also the bringing of many to a knowledge of Christ as Lord and Saviour. There is the test of success.”29 He had cause to be uneasy about the future of the congregation. His successor represented a dramatic change in theological and spiritual direction and the two principles of 18 May 1945 were abandoned. Reid’s mid-week Bible class, the heart of his teaching ministry, was discontinued. Though his vision was not maintained, the church initially was numerically and financially successful. In 1957 tmr Church built, as a result of a Wells fund-raising campaign, one of the most impressive edifices of the postwar Presbyterian Church in Canada. The congregation reached a peak membership of 733 in 1962. Then, tmr started to change as the anglophone exodus from Montreal accelerated during the Quiet Revolution and Quebec became increasingly secular, and the membership went into steep decline. The minister who followed Reid stayed on for thirty-five years, but the congregation slowly evaporated. Everything that Stanford Reid feared might happen took place. He had tried to deflect the decline by raising the commitment level of the congregation. He looked back at the tmr experiment with regret. Disillusionment with the life of a parish minister was only one reason for the direction Stanford Reid’s life took in 1951. As we will see in the next chapter, another factor was his denial by the Presbyterian Church in Canada of a seminary appointment for which he was qualified. These two reverses made him open to a new challenge. We now retrace our steps to discover what was happening in the 1940s in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, the leading contribution Stanford Reid made to its deliberations, and the frustrations he experienced as that decade drew to a close.

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6 A Confessional Canadian Presbyterian, 1941–1951 Ascendant Barthianism and the Limits of Ecumenism

Five years after his return from the United States, Stanford Reid was asked by the Presbyterian Guardian, a paper identified with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (opc), to describe the state of health of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. His two articles in response provide a view of the denomination as he saw it in 1946. Reid began with Church Union as an explanation for the theological ambiguities of the continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada. Those opposed to merger with Methodists and Congregationalist had many, often conflicting, reasons for their nonconcurrence: ... the division did not take place upon clear doctrinal lines. Personal feelings were aroused amongst the ministers: fear of losing one’s church, animosity toward the Unionists for the tricks in which they indulged, and many other motives had their influence. Consequently even those who remained Presbyterian were not all Reformed in their point of view. Likewise among the laity, although out of a total membership of 335,000 about forty-five per cent stayed out, many of those who remained Presbyterian did not do so from conviction but for other reasons. This has not added to the strength of the church in the post-union days.1

But he was hopeful. The appointment of Professor Walter W. Bryden the year before as principal of Knox College was encouraging. “Since 1930 there seems to have been growing up in the church a general tendency toward what is often called ‘Modernism.’” The growth of its influence was particularly strong in the theological seminaries. There

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Walter W. Bryden (courtesy pcca)

was also a great deal of “indifferentism.” But now things were improving: “there has, on the other hand, during the past five or ten years, been also a reaction against this liberal and indifferentist movement.” This he attributed to the influence of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Here his readers might bristle. Cornelius Van Til called Barth’s theology “the New Modernism,” the title of a book he published the same year in which he stated categorically that “the Theology of Crisis cannot legitimately be called a Reformed Theology.”2 While Reid generally agreed with Van Til, he nonetheless felt Barthianism in the Presbyterian Church in Canada was sui generis. And as long as the followers of Karl Barth in the denomination were being attacked by liberals, Reid would stand by them, if not necessarily agreeing with them in everything.

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While one may feel that Professor Bryden and his supporters do not go as far as a thoroughgoing Calvinist might wish, nevertheless it must be recognized that their influence upon the church has been healthy. They have emphasized a return to the Scriptures, a return to doctrine, and also have stressed the doctrine of salvation by grace alone. True, they do not always place quite the same content in these terms as we might wish. Nevertheless, they have exercised a good influence on the church in calling people back to examine the church’s standards, to see if the church is loyal to that which it professes.

It is not known when Reid first became aware of Walter Bryden. When Stanley Glen, Bryden’s successor and disciple, retired as principal of Knox College in 1977, Reid reminisced about their youthful friendship. “It is now a good many years, over forty, since I used to visit you in the manse at Stewarton when you were a student there and I was posted to Braeside. I always look back to those visits as times of great pleasure and encouragement as we discussed the problems of the ministry and of theology.”3 In that summer of 1935 Stanley Glen had just completed his first year at Knox College and was excited by the dynamic teaching of Walter Bryden and Bryden’s discovery of Karl Barth. Bryden, at the college since his appointment in 1927, was a fresh and original thinker, and popular with the students for his creativity and commitment, qualities in short supply at Knox College during those years. Reid was about to leave for Westminster Seminary, and Glen returned to Knox. In December 1937 in The Presbyterian Student, a short-lived Canadian publication, Reid defended Barth after Frank Beare had, in Reid’s words, “declared war on Barthian theology.”4 Frank Beare had indeed declared war on Barthianism. He had stated categorically, in a previous issue of The Presbyterian Student, that “Barthianism is not synonymous with Christian theology ... Against this pugnacious intolerance I register a pugnacious protest and I warn our Barthian friends that neither the Presbyterian Church in Canada nor any church which is truly catholic will ever allow itself to be chained in such a fashion.”5 Beare, Reid maintained, “not only disagrees radically with Karl Barth, but he disagrees just as much with the Reformed position as set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechism.”6 Beare responded to Reid’s attack: “To treat the Confession as sacrosanct is to make of it an idol, and I pray for grace to flee idolatry.” The earlier battles between the liberalism represented by Frank Beare and his allies and the confessionalism of the Reids, father and son, continued when Stanford returned to Montreal. On 15 December 1943 a sermon by the minister of the Montreal Unitarian Church, Angus deMille Cameron, was printed in the Montreal Star trumpeting “the

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assured results of modern higher criticism of the Bible.” Stanford Reid replied: “I feel obliged to record my profound disagreement with him.” What particularly incensed Reid was Cameron’s suggestion that the teaching of religion in the Protestant School Board of Montreal should recognize these so-called assured results. Frank Beare then entered the fray, writing to correct a “serious misstatement” by Stanford Reid. Reid, he asserted, had suggested that “the Critics” – and here he added an aside “by which he means, I suppose, Biblical scholars in general” – did not use historical methods. “This assertion reveals either that Dr Reid is not acquainted with the ordinary methods of historical research, or that he is not acquainted with the work of Biblical criticism. The latter is the more probable, judging by the views of the Bible which he appears to hold.”7 In reply, Reid was caustic “The professor’s mere statement that Higher Criticism is true and proper does not necessarily make it so, and ridicule proves nothing.” When Beare left the Presbyterian Church in Canada, he attributed his defection to the denomination’s capitulation to Barthianism.8 Cynics replied that it was not the theology of Stanley Glen but his appointment to the principalship of Knox College, a position the ambitious Beare coveted, that was the real issue. Reid would maintain an independent estimate of Barthian theology. His defence of Bryden in The Presbyterian Guardian was quickly challenged. Seminary classmate William Young had left Westminster for Faith Theological Seminary in 1936 at the time of the split. He was now serving the separatist Bloor Street Church in Toronto, a congregation Westminster Seminary Professor John Murray often visited. Murray considered Bloor Street Church the closest in North America to his own Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Young accused Reid, in his defence of Barth, as having sold the pass. Reid shot back: “I pointed out that all the ‘Barthians’ did not agree doctrinally ... Perhaps if Dr Young had a little more personal contact with them, he might not have been quite so willing to systematize their ideas.”9 Not that Reid was uncritical of Walter Bryden. In 1945, as a member of the Bryden-dominated Articles of Faith Committee (as it was subsequently known),10 he submitted a minority report to the Assembly, criticizing its statement about election (God’s sovereign choice of those to be saved according to Calvinists and the Westminster Confession) and freewill (human responsibility balancing but not contradicting the doctrine of election as an antinomy). He was particularly unhappy about the committee’s apparent acceptance of Barth’s universalism. Karl Barth maintained that the whole world was elected to salvation “in Christ.” “To say that everybody is elect,” Reid maintained, “means simply that there is no election at all.” He continued: “... we

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should not reject the doctrine merely because it does not satisfy our wishes or our demands, if at the same time it is contained in the Scriptures. My feeling is that this is the basic issue which would divide my view from that of Dr Bryden on this doctrine.”11 The following year, in their “answer to Dr Reid’s dissent” the Articles of Faith Committee stated that it “freely admits that its formulation of the doctrine differs from that of the Westminster Confession.” And then came a significant disclaimer: “we believe that the Committee on Articles of Faith not only may but must examine the Westminster Confession of Faith in the light of Scripture, if it is to be obedient to Christ, and if it is to be faithful to the fundamental principle of the Westminster Confession of Faith itself.”12 The Barthians had differentiated themselves from the confessionalists in the church. Reid regarded Barth’s theology as an improvement over having none at all. In a letter to one of the so-called “Young Turks” of the 1970s he would remember those early years after his return to Canada. “I would say that things are much better now than when I began as a minister of the church. Back in the early forties if anyone said he was Reformed, it was usually taken to mean that he was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, or something like that. The doctrinal consciousness in our church was almost zero, except for a very few older men.”13 What he deplored about those pre-Bryden years were “faculty members who showed little interest in theological trends and were content to repeat well-worn lectures despite student dissatisfaction with such uninspiring material.”14 Reid always hoped that he could form a coalition between confessionalists and the neo-orthodox. He sought friendships with Knox College graduates who shared Walter Bryden’s enthusiasm for Barthianism. In 1947 the minister of the independent Bible Presbyterian Church in Edmonton denounced Walter Bryden’s theology in an article in Carl McIntire’s histrionic magazine, The Christian Beacon. Reid immediately wrote a disclaimer to Arthur Cochrane, the brightest light of the Bryden circle and vice-convener of the Committee on Articles of Faith. Reid explained to Cochrane (since Canadians often found the intricacies of American religious conflict puzzling) that The Christian Beacon had nothing to do with him. “I have even been told that you fellows are prepared to vote with the Liberals against us, because of this criticism.” Reid pointed out that he had defended Bryden in the Presbyterian Guardian the year before. But he also admitted that “At the same time, we might just as well realize that we do not always see eye to eye on things. In fact we may be quite far apart. For that reason I reserve the right to criticize whenever I feel that you fellows are getting too far from the church’s standards; and quite

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frankly I expect that you will also criticize us. It is only in this way that church can really go forward.”15 Confessional loyalty shaped Reid’s attitude toward ecumenical engagement by the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Such engagement had been complicated by Church Union. The non-concurrents had voted against Union, but it did not follow that they would oppose all forms of cooperation with other churches. Nor would Stanford Reid. Looking back to the 1940s thirty years later, he reflected16 that he had been no fundamentalist fighting a rearguard action to preserve the status quo. “Neither I nor Jake Kik, nor any of the others who were engaged in the battle of the ’40s-’60s were opposed to many moves if they were based on our church’s confessional position, but in most cases they seemed to be directed to wiping out our historical Presbyterian position, if not what we regarded as the basic Christian position.”17 His writing at the time bears this out. In 1945 an editorial in the Montreal Star decried what it titled as “Ecclesiastical Isolationism.” Reid replied: “What we need today is not more Protestant uniformity, but denominations which are thoroughly alive to their own beliefs, who will cooperate where they can without compromising their own positions, while at the same time agreeing to differ, and even to have controversy, in charity, over the doctrines on which they disagree. As for organic union, let it come only when there is true unity of belief and witness, not hypocritical uniformity which belies the true state of affairs.”18 The ecumenicity of the Presbyterian Church in Canada was tested twice in the 1940s. In each case Reid was perceived by some not only as anti-ecumenical himself but as a spokesperson for those who were.19 These two issues were the controversy over a joint theological faculty at McGill and the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s relationship with the Church of Christ in China. In both cases, attitudes were complicated by lay suspicions of ordained ministers and particularly denominational board secretaries. Because the majority of clergy went into the United Church of Canada, some laity felt that “professionals” had brought about the Union of 1925 by manipulation and control of the levers of power. Reid explained this resentment and its implications for ecumenical cooperation in the Presbyterian Guardian article: There is one point to which we must refer in connection with this church union movement. It is that it taught the unionists what tactics to employ when working for the merger of various denominations. As in the case of the Presbyterian Church in Canada the leadership for these movements has usually come from

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the church officials, from the leaders of Assembly Boards. Well equipped with information on the church, these men start up a pietistic cry for union with our fellow Christians. They lull to sleep those who are loyal to the church’s standards, and before long a move toward organic union is laid on the table, and approval of it is sought. It was tricks such as these which led to so much grief and sorrow for the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1925.20

It is significant that, like his father before him, Stanford Reid never wore a clerical collar.21 While the majority of Presbyterian clergy in Canada, following Scottish custom, wore the so-called Roman collar, Reid, as a matter of principle, was never seen in one. He felt wearing the collar set him apart and contradicted the Reformation principle of the priesthood of all believers. As a teaching elder, he wanted to be one with those laymen Presbyterian polity described as “ruling elders.” Throughout his ministry he was known as a champion and advocate for the laity, a voice for the voiceless. In this way he often came across as anti-establishment. He abhorred anything that smacked of clericalism and saw the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s continuation after 1925 as the triumph of an informed laity over a clerical establishment that insisted that they knew best. He frequently commended the Women’s Missionary Society. A lay organization that emerged more powerful than ever after 1925, he considered it a useful ally and was happy to see Priscilla take a prominent part in its leadership. He was not pleased when that organization was (in his view) “swallowed” up by the denominational bureaucracy in 1970, no longer maintaining separate funding of the missionary enterprise.22 The first test of Presbyterian ecumenicity in the 1940s was the amalgamation of the Protestant theological seminaries attached to McGill University. Presbyterian College Montreal had emerged out of the legal battles of 1925–27 as one of the trophies of the anti-Unionist cause. Situated at the centre of the campus of McGill University and endowed with funds contributed by the wealthy Free Church merchants of Montreal, it was a powerful reminder of a time when the denomination had been rich and identified with the establishment. The proposal to amalgamate the three theological colleges at McGill – Presbyterian, United, and Anglican – was presented to the McGill University Senate as early as May 1940.23 But even in the previous decade, discussions had been initiated by prominent United Church businessman and McGill governor William Massey Birks, who found a strong ally in the new principal. Cyril James endorsed an amalgamation proposal in 1940. Immediately, strong opposition was expressed by the deans of graduate studies and of law. Each was opposed to any idea of a secular university having a faculty teaching religion. But Birks and Cyril James and

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their ally Dean of Arts A.H.S. Gillson,24 chairman of the committee making the proposal, persevered.25 A Faculty of Divinity at McGill was finally set up in 1947. Among Presbyterians in favour of the project were two McGill professors: R.D. MacLennan and John Hughes. The 1943 General Assembly received a recommendation from the special committee examining the proposed merger that it be accepted in principle. James Smart,26 then of St Paul’s Peterborough, gave “an earnest and reasoned plea,”27 saying that accepting the proposal would tie the hands of the church in its commitment to “replan our entire program of theological education.” Smart, one of the younger neo-orthodox followers of Walter Bryden, was making a name for himself. The debate ended when D.M. Rowat, an elder from Stanley Church, moved, seconded by Stanford’s ever-vigilant Uncle Allan, an amendment that the recommendation be sent down to synods and presbyteries for consideration. Their amendment prevailed. Immediately, Stanford Reid and his fellow confessionalists set about to secure allies in their fight against amalgamation. One person they successfully recruited was Arthur Cochrane. Cochrane agreed to give his views in Biblical Christianity, with the disclaimer that “he does not represent any group or school in the Presbyterian Church.” Cochrane’s article was subsequently published as a pamphlet with a title that echoed an earlier pre-Union bromide: “Presbyterians Awake! The Case Against the proposed Faculty of Theology at McGill.” A clear and articulate thinker, Cochrane set out the case against such an amalgamation cogently and forcefully. “Presbyterians Awake!” had an immediate impact and probably sealed the fate of the proposal. Arthur Cochrane said he did not agree with Presbyterian College principal F. Scott MacKenzie.28 The debate about the independence of Presbyterian College should be conducted on the basis of principle, not expediency. To Cochrane that principle was the confessional identity of the Presbyterian Church in Canada: “The one genuine reason why our Church refused to enter the union of Churches in 1925 was for the sake of her confession of faith, concretely for the sake of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and because she could not see in the Union a strengthening but only a weakening of the Confession of Faith.”29 He went on to argue the case against Presbyterian participation in a joint Faculty of Divinity at McGill. “... what is proposed,” he declared, “is not a Church union theological faculty, but a non-ecclesiastical secular theological faculty.” How then could the church oversee and discipline its professors? There would be other practical implications. After Presbyterian College was swallowed up, would Knox not be the next casualty? A united faculty at the University of Toronto would be a logical

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sequence. And there would be even more serious consequences: “The tempter made a frontal attack upon the Presbyterian Church in 1925. Now he is attacking again ... it will be a relatively easy victory for him to bring about a complete Church Union on a confession-less basis.” The debate was heating up. After two hours of discussion at a special 15 February 1944 meeting of the Presbytery of Montreal, the body most affected by the merger, the remit was turned down by a majority of two, owing to the fact that “lay members of the presbytery [were] almost entirely against the proposal” according to a news item in the Montreal Star the next day. It went on to note that the laity were supported by only two or three clergy “including Rev. Dr W. Stanford Reid.” From then on Reid would be a marked man. The defeated minority in Presbytery responded in the April 1944 issue of the Presbyterian Record. “A Manifesto From Montreal” was signed by self-described “recent graduates of the Presbyterian College who now minister to large congregations in the City of Montreal ...[and are] wholeheartedly in favour of continuing negotiations with McGill University.” “... [The Presbytery’s resolution found the bulk of its ministerial support among men not familiar with the working of the Theological Colleges in Canada.” That was an obvious reference to Reid and Kik, who pastored small churches and were both Westminster graduates. The manifesto gave seven reasons for endorsing the proposal, including the prospect that the amalgamation would enable graduates “to receive a theological education higher in standard and wider in range than our denomination can provide for them.” Ironically, the General Assembly that year would nominate Reid for a three-year term on the board of management of Presbyterian College. In the end the proposal to join in a new Faculty of Divinity at McGill was turned down by the 1945 General Assembly by a narrow vote of fifty-three to fifty-one. It would be twenty-five years before the matter came up again. The second issue was the question of cooperation with the Church of Christ in China. When the Church of Christ in China was formed in 1927, “it was considered the largest and most diverse church union that had taken place in mission lands.”30 The new union denomination embraced a wide spectrum of theology. The China Inland Mission, the largest in the country, and the South Shandong Presbyteries of the China Presbyterian Church stayed out because they considered its theology too vague. Much-loved and revered Canadian missionary Jonathan Goforth, who had remained Presbyterian in 1925 and opened a new field in Manchuria, was deeply unhappy about the

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E.H. (Ted) Johnson (courtesy pcca)

merger. He disliked, to quote his wife,31 both the “creeping liberalism in the North Honan field” (which he had pioneered in 1889) and the “lowering of the standard of truth” that he detected in the formation of the Church of Christ in China. Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth were missionaries from Knox Church, Toronto, the leading evangelical Presbyterian congregation in Canada. Jonathan Goforth died in 1936 and it was Edward Hewlett (“Ted”) Johnson who carried on the work in Manchuria until he returned home to North America when war broke out. In 1943 Johnson was appointed secretary for missionary education of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He wanted to work with the Church of Christ in China and sought to have the church’s policy of non-cooperation reversed. The first appointment of a Presbyterian Church in Canada missionary to the Church of Christ in China was that of his friend Malcolm Ransom, Reid’s Westmount High School classmate, who was assigned in 1944 to the Church of Christ in China in the province of Yunnan.

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Malcolm Ransom took up his delayed appointment in 1946, at the end of the war. James and Lillian Dickson and George and Jean Ross MacKay returned that same year to North Formosa. The two couples were members of Knox Church, Toronto, and were very different theologically from either Ted Johnson or Malcolm Ransom.32 There was a fear that the Formosan Presbyterian Church, the most successful fruit of Canadian missionary effort, would be encouraged to join the Church of Christ in China now that the island had been ceded back to China. Hearing reports from their missionaries in Formosa, Knox Church, Toronto became very concerned. A group of elders – including influential younger men such as A.J. Stewart, head of Evangelical Publishers (at the hub of the fundamentalist/evangelical network in Canada with its magazine Evangelical Christian), and Robert Trewin, convener of Knox’s Missions Committee – asked Reid to write against the denomination (or its daughter church overseas) being involved in ecumenical cooperation or negotiation. Reid was happy to oblige and titled the resulting pamphlet “Regarding ‘The Church of Christ in China’ Movement.” “The Church of Christ in China,” Reid argued, “glories in the fact that it does not have any creed, confessing that it is in reality pretty well indifferent to creeds in general. Therefore, the Church of Christ in China can hardly be expected to bear anything like a truly aggressive witness.” He continued: “It is certainly not Presbyterian in its government, and cannot even be called democratic ... Our missionaries who go out to China under the organization come under its direction and discipline, our church losing all its authority over them despite the fact that they are still supposed to be missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.” “What is the answer?” Reid had a ready response to his own question: “There are 50,000 Chinese Presbyterians today outside the Church of Christ in China.” This was a reference to the continuing Presbyterians of South Shandong, centred in the North China Theological Seminary, who had refused to go into Union. Reid knew of them through the seminary’s Professor Alexander MacLeod, whom he had met at Westminster a decade earlier. “As yet, as far as we know, the Manchurian and Formosan fields have not heeded the siren call of church union. We must strengthen the hands of those who on our fields are standing faithful to the Presbyterian position. We should favour as far as possible the development of a native Presbyterian church, but one which is truly Presbyterian. Presbyterian missions have had a marvellous history thus far, and they should continue as they have been going.”33 In the introduction, seven Knox elders commended the pamphlet to the Formosa church.

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F. Scott MacKenzie (courtesy pcca)

The Presbytery of Montreal became a flash-point for the debate. At the 14 May 1946 meeting J. Marcellus Kik presented an overture, seconded by Stanford Reid, which they asked be approved and sent on to the General Assembly requesting that the church’s links with the Church of Christ of China be sent down to presbyteries under the Barrier Act for approval. This democratic and antiauthoritarian legal procedure, inherited from seventeenth century Scotland, would provide laity across Canada with an opportunity to express their opinions. Their motion was defeated. A year later, on 11 March 1947, F. Scott MacKenzie moved that an overture be sent on to the General Assembly endorsing ecumenical cooperation, specifically with the Church of Christ in China. The overture was approved by a majority, but J. Marcellus Kik and Stanford Reid registered their dissent. Their reasons are significant and are quoted in their entirety:

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We, the undersigned, desire to dissent from the above overture for the following reasons: 1. While not opposing co-operation which is really co-operation, we feel that many of the so-called co-operative movements in which our Church is involved are actually church union movements. This comes out very clearly in the case of the Church of Christ in China, which glories in the fact that it “is explicitly and in reality an organically united church” (Let Us Unite, 20). Such movements as these lead only to the utter subversion of our church’s historic Reformed witness. 2. The policy of co-operation, so-called, with such bodies is a new policy. Our church had no contact with the Church of Christ in China until 1943. When that body was originally formed we refused to take any part in it. Our linking up with the wcc in process of formation is very recent also. Before 1943 we have not allied ourselves with such church union movements. 3. This change of policy has never been submitted to the Church for its consideration. Requests were made at the last General Assembly for such submission to be made and they were refused. In the case of the Divinity Faculty at McGill University, which is something of the same type, this proposal was submitted to the Presbyteries, who turned it down overwhelmingly. 4. By its very indefiniteness of statement the overture in its demands for action against those who disagree with the policy of co-operation, asks that the church forbid open discussion of policies which are not part of the church’s constitution and which have never been submitted to the church. This is a denial of freedom of speech to those within the Church who do not agree with these co-operative policies. This is an unwarranted curtailment of the rights of members of our Church. (Signed) W Stanford Reid (Signed) J. Marcellus Kik34

It was a strong statement, but not histrionic. Drama would be left to Alexander Murray, a minister in Cape Breton who regarded himself (initially at least) as a friend of both Stanford and his father. Alexander Murray was the last thing Reid needed if his comments were to have any credibility. Murray had been called to the Sydney, Nova Scotia, Presbyterian Church from the United States in 1933. Within two years that congregation, the largest in Cape Breton, had split. Out of the schism he then organized Westminster Church, which the presbytery grudgingly legitimized. He continued to be a disruptive influence and attracted as allies several firebrands, one of whom was a young Knox College graduate Perry Rockwood, minister of St James Church, Truro.35 Murray and Rockwood had already sponsored an overture from the Maritimes Synod, asking the 1946 Assembly to withdraw from ecumenical cooperation at home or overseas because

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this “must ultimately result in the emasculation and obliteration of our Doctrinal Standards.” The overture had been rejected by a small majority. Now Murray wrote to the Montreal Star36 in righteous indignation over Scott MacKenzie’s overture. Such a request would mean the Presbyterian Church in Canada would “plunge headlong as never before into cooperation with all sections of the Christian Church.” Then he jumped to Stanford Reid’s defence. Reid was one of the “men who by petitions are seeking to save our Church from a wicked betrayal. They are endeavouring to awaken our people to the grave danger that threatens to destroy our distinctive doctrines and Christian witness.” And, identifying himself with Reid and his friends, he said, “We who take this position are called isolationists.” To which Reid must have uttered a fervent prayer: “May God protect me from my friends.” Feelings were running high. In April Reid wrote to the editor of the Presbyterian Record protesting a rumour that Westminster Seminary students were no longer to be appointed to summer mission fields “because of the action of some of their seminary’s alumni” in opposing the Church of Christ in China.37 That letter was never sent because he was warned it was “too hot.” It would be a reminder of how vulnerable Reid and his friends were to denominational censure and how outside the pale Westminster Seminary was increasingly regarded within the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The 1947 Assembly met in Calgary and considered the Church of Christ in China issue. It was not the Montreal overture that drew their attention but another one on the same subject from the Presbytery of Saskatoon. After procedural wrangling, the matter was referred back to the Board of Missions for further explanation. Presbyteries were also asked to consider and report back the next year. On his return F. Scott MacKenzie, who had been a commissioner, wrote a report of the Assembly’s proceedings for the Presbyterian Record, which he titled “Assembly Affirms True Presbyterianism.”38 The Union of 1925, MacKenzie said, might have reduced the numbers and wealth of the Presbyterian Church in Canada but it had not in any way altered its commitment to ecumenical cooperation. He went on to dismiss as “an absurd claim” that the church had entered a new phase “free from all alliances of affiliations with other ecclesiastical bodies.” Then he singled out “men who have come into the church since 1925 but ought to know better.” It was a bold riposte to Reid and his friends in the presbytery. Reid immediately defended himself. MacKenzie had told “only half the story.” His opposition was not based on the principle of cooperation. “We take this stand because they look toward an organic Church

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union – a union which will destroy our Church’s testimony.” “I am well aware,” MacKenzie replied, “that Dr Reid in his contention is speaking not only for himself but for a group within the Presbyterian Church of Canada – a group whose aims and purposes so far as the Church is concerned, have been very clear for a long time. Their spiritual affiliation is not with the great body of Presbyterian Churches throughout the world – all of which by the way are supporting the Church of Christ in China – but rather with a reactionary group like the so-called Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the United States, – a Church to which they would like very much to see the Presbyterian Church in Canada conform.” In defence of Scott MacKenzie’s personal attack on Reid, one can only say that he was going through a difficult time. He had served the church as principal of Presbyterian College from 1929 but had recently been replaced by Robert Lennox. At the 1948 Assembly Scott MacKenzie claimed he had been “dropped, ousted” from the principalship and that the church had been “crude and brutal” to him. At one point he said that he would seek justice elsewhere if he could not find it at the Assembly. At this hint of legal action, Reid, sitting nearby, was reported to have muttered “That’s a threat.” The appointment of Robert Lennox as principal was an indication that the old liberalism had lost its influence in the Presbyterian Church in Canada as it sought a new identity and a new rationale for its continuation. MacKenzie’s departure as principal was a decisive rejection of post–1925 liberalism in the colleges of the continuing church. Indicative of a desire for a fresh start was the election as moderator of the 1948 Assembly of C. Ritchie Bell,39 the popular minister of MacVicar Memorial Church, Montreal. At forty-two years of age, Bell was the youngest moderator on record. It was he who said, in the heat of the MacKenzie debate, “Let’s not lose our heads.” It was also Bell who asked Reid to provide the Assembly sermon at the evening service at Knox Church, Toronto, where it was meeting. Two days later he wrote to Reid expressing “sincere appreciation for your eloquent sermon ... It was good of you to assume the responsibility on such short notice, and I am confident that every person present must have felt a real uplift by your message.”40 The 1948 Assembly received responses back from the presbyteries. One-third were in favour of cooperating with the Church of Christ in China, one-seventh were opposed, and the rest abstained. Assembly asked the Board of Missions to “take cognizance” of the fact that the denomination was, if one included the abstainers among the “nays,” evenly divided over the issue. By that time Ted Johnson, the chief advocate for the Church of Christ in China, was about to move to the

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United States as general secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement. He would return in 1954 to become overseas missions secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada for the next nineteen years. Stanford wrote a positive report of the 1948 General Assembly in Bible Christianity. He found the way the Assembly had dealt with the Church of Christ in China issue encouraging. Alexander Murray, about to leave the denomination and take his congregation with him, wrote an angry letter in response. A quarter of a century later, Stanford would describe it as one of two of the most painful letters he had ever received.41 It is quoted in its entirety because it shows the middle ground Stanford was attempting to find between ecumenical enthusiasts and separatists. Murray wrote to him: You appear to be rather pleased about the state of church, but surely you are overlooking the fact that a cancer is at work in our colleges. You must know the substance of Dr Bryden’s book. It is permeated with Barthianism which Prof. Van Til has truly stigmatized ‘The New Modernism.’ You must have seen and read some of Prof. Hay’s utterances, also those of Prof. Andrews. And as for Scott MacKenzie’s views you know them only too well. You may think the last Assembly was hopeful. But had you introduced the matter of the unPresbyterian teaching in our Colleges the fat would have been on the fire, and no one knows that better than yourself. Not until our colleges are thoroughly cleansed of Barthianism and Modernism, and our Sunday Schools given lessons in agreement with our Confession of Faith will God pour out His blessing on us. I had looked to you to stand like Luther, and Knox and Calvin against every form of false teaching in our church, but I have been sadly disappointed. If you keep your mouth shut and go along with the ‘machine’ you may get a big church and possibly a professorship, but if you come out boldly in the courts of our church against all that you know is wrong you will have to bear the reproach of Christ, as did Moses of old I know these are strong words, but they come from one who has been long in the fight for sound doctrine, from one who has your highest interest at heart. You are a young man, and there is yet time for you to strike a blow for the truth in the courts of our church, a blow that God would use to overthrow the enemy and to rally many young men to your side. You are capable, you have the gifts of leading a movement in our church that would save her from ruin. I pray that you may hear the call of God to so act. And believe me many will rise up and bless God for you.42

Reid was outraged. He responded in kind: “It is extremely easy to tell this or that person the nature of their duties, but when one does not himself feel any responsibility to carry out those duties, he cannot be

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surprised if others are inclined to disregard his advice. Personally I feel that I am doing as the Lord would have me do, and my ultimate responsibility is to him, and to no one else. With regard to your false, and very unChristian insinuations that I am keeping my mouth shut in order to obtain a big church or a professorship in one of the colleges, all I can say is that to me it destroys any feeling that the rest of your letter is sincere. It is perfectly obvious that you have no confidence in me, and all the exhortation to lead a reform is nothing more than deceit.”43 The final resolution of the Church of Christ in China issue came unexpectedly. China was closed to missionaries, and the Church of Christ in China on the mainland became the government-approved Three Self Movement. Formosa, now named Taiwan, was turned into the island fortress of the anti-communists. Canadian Presbyterian missions, and their daughter, the Taiwan Presbyterian Church, were not only in a highly strategic situation; Taiwan, as a “Presbyterian island” because of earlier comity arrangements, had no Protestant alternatives other than Presbyterianism. Organic union was not even an option. Many of the more liberal Protestant missionaries in China were sympathetic to Mao Zedong’s revolution, none more so than Ted Johnson. Stanford Reid would remind people that Ted Johnson’s uncle was the so-called “Red Dean” of Canterbury, Hewlett Johnson. Former China United Church of Canada missionary, James Endicott, Jr, would receive the Lenin Peace Prize in 1968, the year of the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia. Reid found left-wing church people naive and gullible about the communist and Soviet agenda. Murray’s allusion to the prospect of a professorship was not far from the mark. A committee had been formed to nominate to the 1949 General Assembly a new professor of church history and the history of religions at Presbyterian College. Their nominee was H. Keith Markell, who had been serving as lecturer in church history since 1947. He had an honours B.A. in history from McGill, won the History Prize at Presbyterian College on graduation in 1941, and was pursuing graduate studies at the University of Chicago. He finally received his Ph.D. from that institution in 1969. When the college had returned from its “exile” in Toronto in 1946, Robert Lennox had been named to the chair of Old Testament literature and exegesis. Ironically, as later events would prove, at the time Stanford Reid, a member of the Board of Management, was helping Presbyterian College acquire a new faculty as chairman of the Committee on Academic Appointments. The 1947 General Assembly approved Lennox as principal. Reid and Lennox had been friends

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Robert Lennox (courtesy pcca)

while at McGill, graduating in the same class and receiving master’s degrees the year after. On one occasion as undergraduates, Reid and Lennox visited Lennox’s home in Ottawa. Mrs. Lennox, theologically Arminian and a member of Ottawa’s fundamentalist Gospel Tabernacle,44 and her husband, a strict Scottish Calvinist, got into heated discussion about freewill and predestination. During family prayers Mr Lennox chose to read from Ephesians 1, a passage affirming Reformed theology, much to Stanford Reid’s amusement.45 Reid and Lennox entered Presbyterian College together in 1934. While Reid lasted only weeks, Lennox remained for a full year. He then transferred to Princeton Seminary, receiving his Th.B. and subsequently a Ph.D. in Old Testament. While studying at Princeton he imbibed higher critical approaches to the Old Testament, quite different from what he had been taught during his childhood. In so doing, he distanced himself theologically from Reid and earlier Inter-Varsity

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associations. A gentle, quiet, and self-effacing man, whose limited administrative gifts later got him into difficulty, he found Stanford Reid overpowering. Whatever his reason, Lennox favoured Markell, in spite of Reid’s greater experience and better academic qualifications. The nomination of Keith Markell prompted vigorous debate at the 1949 Assembly. Reid’s friend J. Marcellus Kik moved an amendment that Reid’s name be sent to the board for reconsideration. The amendment prevailed on a recorded vote of sixty-two in favour, fifty-eight opposed. At the same Assembly Reid was appointed to a three-year term on the senate of Presbyterian College. Reid wrote confidentially to some of his friends the following March: “Jake Kik’s success at the last General Assembly in sending back Markell’s nomination was a bit of a shock to me, as I never thought he would get to first base. It has forced me to consider this whole thing really seriously, something I had not done before. The more I look at it, the less I like the project.”46 He raised four concerns in that letter. First, if he became a professor he would be called on to support what he described as “very much a mediating institution.” Second, he doubted if his appointment would indeed, as some of his friends said, be the beginning of a change in the theological direction of the college. Third, his coming to Presbyterian College might be seen as an endorsement for students of his theological position to attend. Fourth, “when one holds an official position in the church ... he is not like a minister in a charge ... he is under a board and the tendency is to compromise.” He concluded by saying that if they still wanted him to let his name stand, he would do so. But there was a danger. “If it is put up and I lose out, then forever my hands will be tied with regard to the college. If I make any criticism it will simply be termed ‘sour grapes.’” Six weeks later he corresponded again with the same group of supporters, after frequent entreaties to reconsider: I am quite prepared to admit I may be wrong. Consequently I am keeping a perfectly open mind on the matter. If it should happen that I should be called by the General Assembly to take over the job, that is called with a considerable majority, I would be willing to consider it very seriously as a call from God. I do not say specifically that I would accept it, because there may be other considerations at the time which might militate against such action. In order to be completely free to make any necessary decisions I have postponed another matter for a year; and in that way I feel that I am ready to do the Lord’s will. Personally I do not feel that there is much hope, but I am not closing any doors which the Lord does not close.47

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At the 1950 Assembly, held in the new MacVicar Memorial Church in Montreal, Markell’s name was again submitted. William McRoberts of Cooke’s Church, Toronto, brought forward Stanford’s name in amendment. There was a bruising encounter, leaving lifelong scars. Twentyfour years later Stanford Reid would recall a personal attack by an unnamed Presbyterian College faculty member who later turned to him for help.48 This time the vote did not need to be tallied as the nomination was approved by a substantial majority. Once again Stanford turned for comfort to a familiar doctrine. As “a convinced Calvinist” he clung to his conviction “that Christ guides his people by his providence.” The 1950 General Assembly finally closed the door on the possibility of Stanford Reid’s academic gifts being used in the service of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. In the future he would find other outlets for his energy, intellect, and experience. He had options, as he had suggested in an oblique reference in his May letter to supporters. They were less positive. Lyall Detlor left the denomination, saying, “there was no hope for the Presbyterian Church in Canada.” Marcellus Kik returned to the United States after twenty years in Canada. He would go on to become the founding associate editor of the Billy Grahamsponsored Christianity Today. Many had a sense of unfairness with regard to Reid’s exclusion. Was the prediction by Unionists in 1925 that the continuing Presbyterian Church in Canada would become an ecclesiastical backwater, specializing in mediocrity and cronyism, really true? It was an unhappy time for Reid’s supporters and particularly for those who shared his theological perspective. By the summer of 1950 Reid showed signs of battle fatigue. The doctor gave him a warning about overwork and said that even his iron constitution could not stand indefinitely the stress he had recently experienced. Church conflicts can be scarring and he had, at that point, recently had more defeats than victories. The failure to be appointed by the church as professor of church history and the history of religions was difficult enough for him to accept. The debate on the floor of the Assembly had been humiliating and deeply hurtful. Reid was now free to devote himself completely to the life of a professional academic. McGill was pressing him to go full-time on the faculty, but the doctor’s warning about overwork and the emotional pull of the ministry, made the decision, which took him eight or nine months to make, very difficult. He later reflected on the dilemma he now faced: My feeling as it gradually took shape was that in the university I had had considerable influence upon a number of students in strengthening their faith and in one of two cases anyhow in bringing them face to face with the claims of

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Christ upon them. Furthermore, I felt that the church was not reaching the young people who were in the university. At that point I could count all the faculty members who made any Christian profession on my fingers, and I had my two thumbs left over. Added to this, I felt that the Lord had opened the way for me by enabling me to obtain a specialized training and that I had been successful in the fields of teaching, research and writing which seemed to indicate that this was my metier.49

He was about to begin a new chapter in his life. He would not abandon the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He would seek to serve it in new ways. He was adamant: “I do not feel that there is or should [be] a separate ‘full time service for the Lord’ from a Christian’s everyday work. I have been ordained to the ministry and I believe that I am still carrying out my ordination vows, although my ministry may be different from that of most men. I might just add that as result of my lecturing and writing I am able to take a stand among scholars and since they know my position, I believe that it is a testimony to the grace of God in Jesus Christ. I have not deserted church nor left the ministry, but am simply carrying out my responsibilities in a field to which I believe the Lord has called me.”50 Another chapter in Stanford Reid’s life was also about to close. Increasingly incapacitated by his arthritis, W.D. had been barely able to get out of his wheelchair. His younger son Stewart had, at the age of thirty-five, announced his engagement to Barbara Pibus, r.n., of Magog, Quebec. Immediately prior to their wedding on 17 March 1952 the couple stopped by at the hospital where W.D. was a patient. Unable to attend the ceremony at Stanley Church, he gave them a patriarchal blessing. A month later, on 10 April 1952, his years of intense pain came to an end. Stanley Church was filled for the final farewell. The service was conducted by Montreal Presbytery in a manner befitting a “well known minister.”51 Both Montreal’s English newspapers featured editorial tributes to his life, ministry, and influence on the city. The Gazette headed their eulogy “If I Had Ten Lives”: “Rev. Dr William Dunn Reid, who died on Thursday after a long illness, was a man whose whole heart was in the ministry. And certainly few men could look back upon a more fruitful service.” As witness the paper cited the 4,200 members he had received into the church, his prairie years as a home missionary, and “his diligent pastorate in different areas of Montreal.” All these, the paper claimed, “will have a still-wider influence that can never be estimated.”52 The Montreal Star was equally effusive: “Few clergymen were bet-

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ter known here, for his work in the church coincided with the development of the city stretching over more than fifty years.” The obituary described his career, from Victoria Mission Church in Goose Village, on to Taylor Church in the east end, and then his extraordinary feat in bringing Stanley Church from imminent collapse “into the flourishing and influential church it is today.” The editorial concluded: “His theological vigor matched his frame, and he was a big man. He will be much missed by a host of people who came under his ministry and the influence of a dedicated personality.”53

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7 Academic and Administrator, 1951–1962 McGill During and After Duplessis

“Two careers will merge into one when Rev Dr W. Stanford Reid returns to teaching duties next session at McGill University, where his promotion from assistant to associate professor of history was announced today.” The June 1951 news item in the Montreal Star came as no surprise to Reid’s parishioners at the Presbyterian church in the Town of Mount Royal. The congregation was moving to a permanent home at the end of the summer. Their founding minister would remain until a service of dedication had been held. Then both minister and church would go their separate ways and start on a new course. It was also a new phase in the life of McGill University. For the first time convocation had been held in the Forum, Montreal’s hockey shrine. More than 10,000 had attended, including 1,547 graduates. Leading the procession was the new university marshal, Dr W.S. Reid, bringing the assistant marshals and the graduates into centre rink. It was a moment of pride for both parents and those receiving degrees. It was also a moment of pride for Stanford and Priscilla Reid. Reid was caught up immediately in the life of the university. The following January he was pictured in the Montreal Star among piles of examination booklets. As chief invigilator from 1946 to1952 in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, he was quoted as saying sternly: “We have heard all the arguments against the periodic examination system, and it would save us a lot of tedious work. But there is,” he went on, “abundant evidence of the necessity, from time to time, to put down what we know on paper in answer to a limited number of questions, which may cover relatively little in respect to all the subject matter in

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a year’s course.” The preacher in him saw an opportunity to draw a moral: “But isn’t the examination actually a ‘life’ situation? Throughout life we are called upon to mobilize our knowledge and ‘know-how’ to meet a given situation. But we only use a small part of our knowledge in solving individual problems or meeting specific situations. It is important to know what knowledge to select and how to apply it.” He had received the appointment, he said years later, “as they had had a great deal of cheating and they felt that a person known as a Presbyterian would be able to clean up the situation, which I hope I did.”1 By the spring of 1952, Reid was offered a new and even more demanding position. On 1 May he became warden of the university men’s residences Douglas and Wilson Halls. Both were on University Street. Wilson Hall, located near the geographic centre of the university, had been a Methodist student residence. Douglas Hall, built in the 1930s, was an opulent residence further up the mountain, and featured an attractive warden’s suite, which the Reids now occupied. Between Douglas and Wilson Halls there were to be 230 students under his care. His predecessor as warden, Professor Frederick Watkins, told Stanford Reid, as Reid would later recall, “that he was so glad that they had appointed a Presbyterian as with my Calvinistic sense of morality and responsibility I would probably do a better job at handling things than he had!”2 Three weeks after taking occupancy, Stanford and Priscilla hosted an “at home” in their new home for graduating students from both residences and Presbyterian College. Also invited were the chancellor of the university, Chief Justice O.S. Tyndale, Principal and Mrs James, and the members of the Board of Governors and the Senate with their spouses. Among those pouring for the occasion was the redoubtable Muriel Roscoe, Stanford’s counterpart for women, who served as warden of Royal Victoria College, and Grace Fieldhouse, wife of H. Noel Fieldhouse, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and head of the Department of History. The McGill history department in 1952 was very different from the one in which Stanford had won his academic spurs in the 1930s. It maintained its position as one of the top three such departments in Canada, but its elitism and its English orientation had all but vanished. As Stanley Frost notes in his history of McGill, “Significant changes took place not only in methods of study, but also in content.” He explains: “what breathed new life into the humanities was the postwar ‘discovery’ of the other races of the world, and this theme is further illustrated by the development within the History Department.”3 Edward Robert Adair was still teaching but, with two more years

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H. Noel Fieldhouse (courtesy McGill University Archives)

until retirement, his influence was limited. Stories about Adair were legion, and Stanford Reid loved to repeat them. Once Adair approached A.E. Morgan, principal from 1935 to 1937. Adair had been an associate professor for eleven years and thought he now deserved a promotion to full professor. Three weeks later, he inquired as to what had been decided. “The answer is no, “ Morgan replied. Adair complained that he was not being treated fairly. The principal looked him squarely in the eye and said: “When I was at Hull (where he had been principal before coming to McGill) I fought and killed better men than you. I fought and killed six good men, better men than you.” “Really?” Adair replied, “I had no idea there were six good men at Hull.” He turned on his heel and walked out, leaving Morgan speechless. Adair was chairman of the department from 1942 to 1947. Unlike Reid, his relations with Cyril James were chilly. He would needle James. One time when the principal was giving a talk on British

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economics he broke in with a cutting: “Now, what is the moral of this little tale?”4 Adair was succeeded as chairman by H. Noel Fieldhouse, who aspired to be a Canadian A.J.P. Taylor. He had an air of importance and appeared anxious to connect with people who were important or could do something for him. The consummate bureaucrat, to some he resembled a caricature from Gilbert and Sullivan.5 One later member of the department, who took an m.a. in 1952 and his Ph.D. in 1959, chose Reid as his supervisor because Fieldhouse “didn’t know what to do with graduate students.”6 Reid would gleefully recall that on one occasion Dean Woodhead, who preceded Fieldhouse as dean of Arts and Sciences, had announced in the faculty lounge that he was “taking up a collection to send an unpopular member of the faculty back to Gibralter with the other monkeys.” Reid did not mention that Fieldhouse had been born in Gibralter. Fieldhouse had been chairman of the Department of History at the University of Manitoba from 1930 to 1945. A pilot in the First World War when still in his teens, he maintained a kind of swashbuckling style that glamourized him with some, women particularly. With First Class degrees from both Sheffield and Oxford, he was part of a cluster of outstanding historians in Winnipeg, among them Arthur Lower, who came, fresh from Harvard with his Ph.D. in 1929, the year after Fieldhouse arrived. Lower taught at United College7 downtown and was not an admirer of Fieldhouse.8 Other colleagues, who found his manner irritating, agreed. At the 1942 Canadian Historical Association meeting, Fieldhouse presented a provocative paper titled “The Failure of the Historians.”9 At that scary time, as Western civilization seemed imperilled, Fieldhouse addressed concerns about the utility of history – and the historian’s task. “In my own teaching,” he opined, “I find that possibly my greatest difficulty is to prevent my students from imposing, on all the complexities of the past, an artificial and arbitrarily simplified pattern which is vaguely associated with their idea of progress.”10 John Bartlet Brebner, widely respected as the doyen of Canadian historians, had come up from Columbia to attend the meeting. His assessment of Fieldhouse’s presentation was scathing. “It comes as something of a surprise to find that an historian, whom most of us were accustomed to think of as spending his hours of self-indulgence in imaginary gossip with Bolingbroke at a London coffee-house has, during the past two or three years, sharply focussed his attentions on the continent of Europe in its present throes.”11 His conclusion: “Professor Fieldhouse comes quite close to arrogance himself. His attitude toward students as bottles in a machine which carries them to the

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teacher-spout to be filled and capped is an unwarranted and probably dangerous one.”12 That reference to Bolingbroke was a particular barb. Fieldhouse was always going to publish the definitive biography of Bolingbroke but it never appeared. He came to Montreal the year before Lower left Winnipeg for Queen’s, becoming in 1946 the Kingsford Professor of History, a post that had remained vacant during the war following the retirement of C.E. Fryer in 1942.13 His rise at McGill was rapid. Two years after arriving, Fieldhouse was appointed chairman of the Department of History. A year later, 1948, he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He held both positions until 1962. For his final four years until retirement, he was Vice-Principal (Academic). He sparred with left-wing Dean of Law and poet Frank Scott and, according to one historian of historians, “has become somewhat of a cult figure in recent years for many conservatives.”14 In one area Fieldhouse and Reid were in complete agreement. Fieldhouse as an educational administrator resisted categorizing history as a social science. As he stated in an internal university memorandum: “It is not the purpose of history to serve as the factual material for a generalizing social science. It aims, rather, to provide man with a knowledge of himself. It shows man what he is by showing him what he has done. The critical re-experiencing of the thought involved in res gestae enlarges and enlightens nature. History in this respect is akin to literature, and belongs properly with the humanities.”15 Reid concurred. Fieldhouse, like Reid, was a British historian, but on coming to McGill he branched into the European and diplomatic fields, taking the final 320 and 420 honours courses. To Fieldhouse, all European history after 1789 was a postscript to the French Revolution. “Downtrodden people,” Fieldhouse would tell his class, “never make a revolution. Revolutions are carried out by people who have acquired some art in the political arena.”16 At the beginning of his lectures he would differentiate between liberalism – “a matter of quality” – and democracy – “a matter of quantity.” He found the terms “left” and “right” appropriate only on the Continent and useless in English politics. Fieldhouse tended to go in for generalities and gave survey questions in examinations covering vast swaths of European history, which gave him a great deal of discretion in marking. By the 1950s the McGill history department was a much more eclectic mix than it had been earlier. Gone was the clubby English atmosphere, though it was still uniformly male. One link with the past was maintained by the presence of medievalist Charles Calvert Bayley, who, like Waugh before him, had been trained at Manchester before taking

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his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1937. Bayley went up through the ranks at McGill, first as lecturer in 1935 to full professor after 1958. He succeeded Fieldhouse as chairman from 1961 to 1965, and as Kingsford Professor.17 Reid and Bayley always had a good relationship. Reid respected his colleague’s quiet and patient scholarship and disciplined research and writing. He was also a churchman. Bayley had the onerous task of teaching the introductory History 100 to hundreds of sixteen-year-olds in the cavernous Moyse Hall. In Quebec in those years before cegeps, junior matriculation brought a great many teenagers into university who would today be regarded as too young and immature for tertiary education. As well, Bayley taught History 210, “Mediaeval Life and Institutions,” and a final course, History 400, on the “Historical Development of the Institutions of Great Britain.” Hereward Senior, now the oldest and longest serving member of the history department at McGill, remembers Charles Bayley, who was quieter than either Reid or Fieldhouse, as the ablest man in the department and the one whose writing and research are the most likely to endure. And unlike Fieldhouse, Bayley was regarded as an excellent judge of character. Bayley had a wry sense of humour. A few weeks after Reid left McGill in 1965, Bayley provided him with an update on university gossip: “You will be interested to know that the establishment of a necking area in rvc [the women’s residence at McGill] has excited observations of protest from the non-neckers on the ground of excessive necking. When asked to define excessive necking, the leader of the antimovement said it meant too much necking. Could it be that the men’s residences may soon be torn by a similar schism?” To which Reid replied: “The same thing is going to take place up the hill, a prognostication which I made to the Principal over a year ago but which he brushed aside because I didn’t really know anything about students or residences.”18 There were three other members of the department in the fifties. John Cooper,19 a specialist in Canadian history, taught History 305. Cooper was the recipient of McGill’s first Ph.D. in history in 1938.20 Serb Milos Mladenovic21 came to McGill in 1950 as a refugee from Tito’s Yugoslavia. His History 215 was an introduction to eastern European history. Mladenovic expanded the department’s offerings in Russian and Byzantine history. Best known for an impressive number of graduate students who went on to great distinction, he left McGill in 1964 to edit The New Review, a publication devoted to eastern European history. Mladenovic was staunchly anti-communist. In contrast, Chicago-born Perez Zagorin was a left-leaning liberal, but he had no use for the Soviet Union. President John F. Kennedy was

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his hero. His specialty was Tudor England, so his interests overlapped with Reid’s though there was no sense of competition. Following a doctorate at Harvard, Zagorin taught at Vassar College and came north during the McCarthy witch hunt. He taught History 326, “Tudor and Stuart England,” to appreciative students. He returned to the United States the same year Reid left McGill and subsequently had a long and distinguished career at the University of Rochester. He has continued researching and writing as a fellow of the Shannon Centre for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia. He published widely in the field of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century history. His most recent book, the biography Francis Bacon, appeared in 1998 to positive critical reviews and was written when he was well into his seventies. In the 1950s it was possible for even an undergraduate in the honours program to get to know one’s professors personally. Fieldhouse, as chairman of the department, led the honours seminar though he was often distracted as an administrator. Others in the department had, or made, more time for their students, and Stanford Reid was particularly popular with graduate students. “When I was running the residences,” he recalled, “I used to have Thursday afternoon as my afternoon for Graduate Students. At two o’clock the m.a. and Ph.D. students would meet, that is the ones in certain fields would meet, and then at 3:30 we would have refreshments and then another group would come in and then I would go on with them until five o’clock.”22 One of his McGill graduate students said, Dr Reid was an exemplary advisor. During my three years in residence at McGill, the Reids hosted his graduate and undergraduate honours students each week at their beautiful residence in historic Douglas Hall. Each of us gave a progress report and even though it was friendly and low-keyed, it was a good way to keep the pressure on. One amusing occurrence was the occasional serving of Dr Reid’s infamous homemade wine. It was vile stuff – with sediment floating around, but he was proud of it, so we had to find ways of dumping it (potted plants were convenient) without hurting his feelings. They were, nonetheless, always gracious hosts. My impression was that Stanford was a loner in the Department. His main orbit was the Church. Also, the fact that the Reids had no children of their own probably explains in part their singular devotion to their students. He was always available, returned chapters promptly with copious notes, and at my anxiety ridden final defence, he did everything possible to help bring me through the ordeal. I’ve compared notes with other graduate students and count myself fortunate in having worked with Dr Reid.23

The courses Reid taught were originally called History 5 and 6. In 1955 they were renumbered History 210 and 310. History 5 or 210

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was the introductory History of Great Britain, a prerequisite for all students specializing in history or wanting to do an honours degree. He had inherited the course from Charles Fryer, who had taught it for twenty years. History 6, his other initial offering, was titled “The Rise of the British Industrial Democracy since 1815.” Following appointment as full-time associate professor, Reid added History 15 and 16. History 16, later 411, “History of Celtic Britain and Ireland,” was an unusual offering in the days before the subject became popular.24 It was a subject that would gestate, over a decade and a half, into the School of Scottish Studies at Guelph. Reid’s particular love was History 15 (later 410), which he called “The Intellectual History of Western Thought Since the Reformation.” The course was structured around twenty-three “intellectual problems with which men in the western world have wrestled during the past four and a half centuries.” In the introduction to the syllabus, he explained his approach: “In a great many cases, university students have the habit of sitting in class and listening to the story of these intellectual struggles very much as a spectator, comfortably ensconced in a grandstand, watches a football game. He observes what is going on, but actually does not participate in the struggle and so does not really experience what is going on. It is to make the student struggle to find a solution to these age-old problems that this book has been prepared, for only as he takes his part in the striving for truth will he appreciate the wrestlings of those who have come before.”25 In this course, Reid was riding a wave. Intellectual history had become a whole new academic discipline. As a Christian professor he felt free to market his approach along with Marxists and agnostics. The final problem asked the question: “Modern Civilization in Progress or Decay?” He stated categorically: “both modern historical interpretation and scientific theory sees progress not as leading to perfection, but to destruction. In this way modern thought has come to something of a standstill.” And then his Christian faith has the final word. “It is at this point that Christian thought has once again commenced to be heard. Both Protestant and Roman Catholic individuals and churches have pointed out that ‘man’s extremity is God’s opportunity.’ They have reemphasized the desperate situation of man because of the corruption of sin, a corruption which man himself cannot cure since it is beyond his power, but is subject to the power of divine grace. While warning men concerning the grave danger in which they are, the Christian protagonists have not adopted the hopelessness of the humanist, for they believe that in a return to Christianity is man’s hope, both spiritual and intellectual.” Readings for that final section of the course were provided from Dean Inge’s The

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Idea of Progress, Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Truth Unchanged, Unchanging. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a fiery Welsh Calvinist physician whose rapiersharp mind made him one of the twentieth century’s most articulate advocates of Reformed thought, had the last word. The minister of Westminster Chapel in London for thirty years, Lloyd-Jones had published a book of sermons titled Truth Unchanged, Unchanging. The section Reid excerpted asked the question “Is the Gospel Still Relevant?” The answer was a ringing affirmation to the uniqueness of Christianity: “The gospel of Jesus Christ confronts and challenges the modern world with the statement that it alone has the answer to all man’s questions and the solution to all his problems.”26 For many students it was their first encounter with Calvinism, perhaps even with Christianity. The eighth congress of the Universities of the Commonwealth, held in Montreal in September of 1958, started Reid thinking about “The University’s Social Task.” That became the title of an article that appeared in the Quarterly of the Free University of Amsterdam the following year. Questions about policy, relationships between the various faculties, the founding of new universities (an issue with which he would later have firsthand acquaintance) all came down, Reid reflected, to the question, “What is the purpose of a university? What is its responsibility to society?” “These are questions which every university must ask and answer if it is properly to understand and fulfil its social task.”27 Tracking the growth of the postwar university community, which, as he pointed out, was only bound to grow by 1965 as the postwar baby boom crested, the university had an increasing social responsibility. What is that responsibility and who is to determine it? Reid asked. In response he affirmed that “society’s needs are the university’s opportunity.” And, to the Christian within the university, “the institution of higher learning should decide the nature of its duties in the light of the revealed will of God. The problems of society should be seen as God’s indication of the path it should follow.”28 Reid’s analysis of society in the fifties was a disturbing one. Beneath the economic and cultural expansion, the superficial altruism that expressed itself in burgeoning church membership rolls and expanding charitable giving he could see only as “egotism,” “moral confusion and even immorality,” and “moral and spiritual breakdown in the individual.” The cause of this was that humankind “has lost all idea of [its] proper covenant relationship to God through Jesus Christ.” The concept of the covenant, so vital to the original settlers in New England and

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Virginia, had been lost. This cultural swing to “materialism and a sociological evolutionism” had resulted in “the almost total disappearance of the Christian covenant concept from American thinking” and “an American secularist liberal philosophy largely derived from Bentham and Darwin, based upon the concept of the individual ego’s search for survival and security.” The evangelical Christian response to this had been anaemic: “Their ethical outlook has been largely limited by an individualistic attitude toward Christianity without any consciousness of either their vertical or horizontal covenantal responsibilities.” Looking ahead into the sixties, Reid forecast anarchy and chaos economically, socially, and politically. At the same time, he stated, the “pendulum will probably swing violently in the other direction bringing in dictatorship with unity and security enforced by violence. Herein arises the university’s responsibility ... the integration of the American societal pattern which is at the present time in danger of falling apart. It can accomplish this, however, only as it aids the individual in attaining the inner reintegration which he has largely lost. Instead of having a dichotomous personality, divided between the material and the spiritual spheres of his being, he must be brought to the place where once again he possesses true unity of personality.” As an “observant university teacher” he experienced the spiritual hunger of students. “They have not been able to produce by their humanistic studies or by their scientific discoveries a transcendental philosophy to satisfy man’s intellectual and religious needs.” He cited a discussion with three Jewish students following one of his intellectual history courses. They asked: “Why is it that neither in the synagogue, nor in the university classroom are we offered a relevant transcendental philosophy such as Calvin possessed?” After that conversation he reflected that “American students are seeking for a philosophy superior to the ravages of space-time which will give them a solid foundation for thought and for life itself, but nothing is forthcoming.”29 He challenged the Christian intellectual. Meaning at the university would be recovered not by preaching but by “hard intellectual work, application and effective teaching in all spheres of thought.” The need of the hour was that Christians should “dedicate their lives to the cause of higher education ... Christians must go into the ‘neutral’ institutions where through their scientific exactitude, their scholarly ability and perhaps even their administrative gifts, they may win a hearing for the Christian position, that men may once again realize that their covenant with God alone gives meaning to nature and society.” American universities are confronted by society with the question: “Where can true wisdom be found?” He concluded with a ringing affirmation: “American universities in general seem to be going about their task in the

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wrong way by exalting man. What is needed is that they should find their answer in Christ, the Sovereign Word of God.”30 Many Christian students found Reid’s presence reassuring. Fifteen years later, when he had moved on to teach at the University of Guelph, a Presbyterian pretheological student from rural New Brunswick admitted how fearful he was that he might lose his faith while studying at a secular university and sought his help. Reid replied reassuringly: I shall never forget the flak I received when I moved from a pastorate to go into university teaching full time ... I did it to a large extent because I felt a university is where Christians ought to be, teaching ... As to your question about the Christians’ influence in the department this is a little hard to evaluate. Those who are professing Christians find that students very often come to us for help and we are able to do a good deal in this direction. Our lectures also demonstrate fairly clearly our position which I know turns some students off, but encourages others. I doubt whether we have too much influence on the other faculty members who are already set in their ways ... We all try to be the ‘salt’ that gives savour to the intellectual life of the campus.31

Three years later that same student would affirm: “I really cannot say how much I have appreciated your presence at the University of Guelph. You may even exceed Martin Luther in your concern for your students. You’ve been deeply appreciated.”32 At least one of Reid’s students, and later a professional colleague who taught at McGill for almost forty years, felt that Stanford Reid’s religious faith did affect his professional career. “Stanford Reid was not part of the intellectual/liberal establishment,” Hereward Senior recalled. “His faith, particularly his Calvinism, was not respectable.” “There was,” he concluded, “a real boycott” as Reid failed to get the best books to review in journals. He received unfavourable reviews of his own books, which may have been skewed in part because of his frank espousing of religious perspectives on historical events. There was a price to being openly religiously observant. Hereward Senior sensed that, throughout his career, Stanford Reid had been on an unofficial “black list”of professional academic historians.33 If that was the case, Reid chose cheerfully to ignore it and it never made him bitter or resentful. The willingness of the university – both at McGill and subsequently at Guelph – to permit the expression of Reid’s often outspoken Christian and Calvinist views is remarkable in retrospect. His propagating of the Van Tilian apologetic in his History 410 course at McGill would, some maintain, be unacceptable in the climate of today’s university. In

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his recent God’s Name in Vain, Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter reflects that “on America’s elite campuses, today, it is perfectly acceptable for professors to use their classrooms to attack religion, to mock it, to trivialize it and to refer to those to whom faith truly matters as dupes, and dangerous fanatics on top of it. Antireligious slurs have become a commonplace of intellectual discourse, so much so that scholars are not expected to cite any authority when, in their academic work, they refer to the religiously devout as narrow-minded, irrational, or poorly educated.” He then draws the comparison: “By way of useful contrast, imagine the reaction were a professor at an Ivy League school, say, to use the classroom as a pulpit from which to evangelize.”34 There are no recorded conversions of Reid’s students to Calvinism, or even to Christianity. Many students with a Christian family tradition can attest to his ability to help them keep the faith in a challenging environment. Throughout his thirty-seven-year teaching career in two secular universities Reid’s Christian position was never compromised. While fellow Westminster Seminary graduate and Notre Dame professor George Marsden may complain that there is today in academia a “deep-rooted prejudice against substantive religious views,” and that Christian scholars are “virtually required to keep their religious views hidden,”35 such was not the case with Stanford Reid a generation ago. When he left McGill in 1965, the response of his colleagues in the history department was remarkable. Speaking modestly in the third person, Reid recounted what happened after he announced to his department his intention to resign to take another position. “What was his surprise to discover that all the members, from the eldest to the most junior, came to him at one time or another to express their sorrow because they felt that he formed the corner-stone of the department. As one of the youngest put it, ‘You provide the ballast for our ship.’ Some of the members are now beginning to question why this has been so, and perhaps they may reach some surprising answers.” Reid’s conclusion was “simply as an individual Christian the Christian professor bears his testimony. Because of his views some may dislike him, but at the same time others will be drawn to ascertain ‘what makes him tick.’ Here lies his opportunity.”36

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8 Staying the Course, 1952–1958 Fundamentalism, Christianity Today and Evangelical Identity

“McGill’s Milk-Drinking Men Must Make Their Own Beds,” the Montreal Gazette headlined in early October of 1952. The new warden of Douglas Hall had put an end to maid service in Douglas Hall. Each resident would have to make his own bed, or leave it unmade. It was grist for the journalistic mill. The Montreal Star editorialized: “On the Making of Beds” asked, tongue firmly in cheek about this “unusual humiliation,” “Will the proud spirit of male McGillians be dashed into mental despair?” “Is the McGill undergrad up to it? We doubt it. Better give the idea a six months’ hoist and further study.” The McGill Daily hit closer to home. “Who makes the bed in the warden’s suite? – no one is quite sure. And Mrs Reid, as of press deadline is ‘not available for comment.’” Stanford Reid remained adamant. He announced that bed-making residents were “doing quite a good job.” He had to cut costs and clear up an administrative mess. Unpopular measures called for firmness and, above all, a sense of humour. “Priscilla the Pig” was another student prank. Priscilla – was she named for the warden’s wife? – was the Douglas Hall G House pig. The animal was to be wined and dined as a guest at the 1952 St Andrew’s Ball at the Windsor Hotel. “Faultlessly attired in a hide-tight gown of fine white lard, decorated with a large red G on her back, she was a vision of loveliness,” it was reported. After visiting the women’s residence, Royal Victoria College, she made her way in a fine red MG convertible to the hotel, where “her grand entrance assured the success of The Saint Andrew’s Ball. It was said that she must have Scottish blood, though she blanched at the sight of the Haggis, perhaps she

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thought it contained a remote ancestor.” Sly digs at the new Scottish flavour of the residence were all in good fun. Reid quickly demonstrated that he could be tolerant and that he enjoyed a good joke. He and Priscilla received many expressions of thanks for their year-round hospitality. In the off season, groups such as the Faraday Society came and found a warm welcome. Their time at Douglas Hall, they wrote back after their conference, was “very comfortable and agreeable.”1 In 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, the Reids made their way first to Scotland and then on to the Continent, where they spent time in Holland and Geneva. Stanford’s research would lead to a major article the following year in the scholarly mediaeval history journal Speculum entitled “Trade, Traders and Scottish Independence.” He traced the Scots trading routes from Scotland to Holland, into the Baltic Sea and beyond. After work on primary sources for this paper, the Reids went on to two theological conferences, in France and Scotland, which placed Reid solidly in the international Reformed orbit. On his turn to Montreal, he was invited to speak on the new forthcoming Elizabethan age “as great and glorious as the first.” His task as an historian was to provide some reality to the current hype. The Montreal Herald in March of 1954 noted that he had done “a needed hatchet job” on the first Elizabethan age in an article he had written for the McGill student literary periodical Forge. He had written: “One cannot help feeling that [Elizabeth I] was inclined to be rather an unethical, dictatorial and irascible old maid.” The first Elizabethan Age was dominated “not by greatness and glory, but insecurity, high prices, unstable foreign trade, political uncertainty, fear of invasion and religious unrest.”2 The second, he hoped, would be better. In another article, the coronation of the second Elizabeth, in June of 1953, “means tremendous responsibility for the Queen, but it also implies great responsibilities for her people. They have accepted her, and it is their responsibility to support her both materially and spiritually. This means loyal service but it also means continual intercession on her behalf. This is our Christian responsibility, therefore, let us properly fulfil it.”3 1954 marked the publication of the only textbook Stanford Reid ever wrote. The Economic History of Great Britain was, according to the preface, a survey that would “provide a factual basis upon which the student of economics and history can build an understanding of the economic development of Great Britain.” Although it took in the whole sweep from prehistoric times to the return of the Conservatives in 1951, more than half the book was devoted to the period since

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1715. It was specifically intended to be an economic history not just of England but of the whole of the British Isles. “If a well-rounded picture is to be achieved, the whole complex of islands must be considered.” Reid also, true to his commitments, set out to interweave “political, philosophic and religious thought” as they interacted with economic forces. The idea, he noted in the introduction, had been suggested to him by economist and friend Cyril James, who had also provided “continual encouragement.” But above all he was indebted to Priscilla, without whose help “this book would never have been completed,” “for her help in many ways, and for her unfailing encouragement.” The Economic History of Great Britain, with 557 pages in twentyseven chapters, was a major project. The publisher, Ronald Press of New York City, specialized in academic publications and textbooks. Unfortunately, it was not a critical or commercial success. The reviews were generally dismissory. Herbert Heaton, a Canadian then teaching at the University of Minnesota, would review the book in The Canadian Historical Review. Heaton’s own Economic History of Europe had been the classic textbook on the subject since 1936 with several editions and translations. Heaton sniffed: “I gather that Professor Reid is not a specialist in economic history and does not teach the subject in detail, save in a course on twentieth-century Britain. His chapters on this recent period are good, though over-detailed for a book covering so long a time-span. For earlier centuries, however, he had to rely on secondary, even tertiary (i.e., textbook) sources of information. Some of these are out of date, while important books and articles of recent vintage seem to have been overlooked. Hence many bits of narrative, interpretation and timing are old fashioned and belong to what was recently called ‘the economic history of yesteryear.’”4 Heaton went on to point out in “an over-long list” numerous errors of fact, which he gratuitously attributed either to Reid’s typist or linotypist. It was a devastating review. Reid used the Economic History of Great Britain as text for his introductory course, History 210. Others also found it helpful in their classes. What stands out, almost a half century later, is that Reid was one of the first to employ the four-nations approach to British history, long before it became fashionable. At the same time as unflattering reviews for the Economic History of Great Britain were coming in, Reid had another painful experience of rejection, this time from the most prestigious evangelical pulpit in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Knox Church, Toronto, was seeking a senior pastor. The assistant minister of the congregation, John Laird, had been appointed interim moderator of the congregation. This was

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extraordinary because an interim moderator is always chosen as an objective outsider in order to convey the Presbytery’s concerns, wield its power, insist on good order, and not be subject to congregational pressures. It is always difficult to serve two masters, as Laird was soon to discover. As interim moderator, Laird chaired the Vacancy Committee. The previous minister, Robert Barr, had died in August of 1953 while on holiday in England. Two years would elapse before there would be a successor. The process of choosing a minister for Knox Church illustrates the reality that evangelicalism in the Presbyterian Church in Canada has always been a multi-layered phenomenon. The committee negotiations with Stanford Reid were byzantine. The outcome of the process illustrated for him that he was not acceptable either to ecumenical liberals or to the dispensational fundamentalists with whom some in the church ignorantly identified him. Archie Stewart, as clerk of session of Knox Church, explained later why that process took two years. His remarks illustrate the hubris that characterized the congregation: “With our unique traditions, our special responsibilities, the unusually strategic position our Church occupies in relation to the University, the denomination, and to evangelical believers generally, it is not to be expected that the situation of Minister of Knox Church is one to be filled except after much care, patience and prayer have been exercised.” Only outside Canada, it was implied, was there an individual that could meet such a rigorous assessment. The committee turned to Scotland for a candidate and on 30 May and 6 June 1954 William Fitch of Glasgow, minister of Springburn Hill Church of Scotland, preached at Knox Church, though not as an official candidate. The congregation was greatly impressed and a call was issued. Archie Stewart picks up the story again: “The call, however, was declined, much to our disappointment, though it was recognized that Dr Fitch had prior responsibilities in Scotland. Other ministers were introduced but there seemed at year end little likelihood that any other man could commend the united support accorded earlier to Dr Fitch. A few members of Session, however, had continued to correspond with him and had informed him of our apparent difficulty in finding a suitable man upon whom the Congregation could agree.”5 Stanford Reid was one of the “other ministers” to whom Stewart refers. He was asked was to preach twice at Knox Church on Sunday, 31 October 1954, the beginning of the congregation’s anniversary week of services. He was to speak the following evening as well. A delegation of three arrived in Montreal to follow up on the invitation and scout out the land. Their report was received by a joint meeting of the Knox Church Session (board of elders) and the Vacancy Committee on

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3 October 1954. Their investigation “on site” had turned up some negatives. Now the elders were embarrassed that Reid had already been invited. Would they, on the basis of what they had heard, withdraw the invitation? Three men were delegated to determine whether they should now ask him not to come to preach. The next day the three agreed that the invitation should be withdrawn. John Laird, interim moderator but also staff member and insider – a definite conflict of interest – was asked to call Reid with this delicate request, hoping that he would now quietly withdraw. Laird spoke on the telephone in the church vestry as Knox trustee and elder Alexander McPherson sat listening in, presumably to ensure that he put their position firmly enough. Laird later admitted that “my call on the fifth was not made on my own initiative, nor to express my personal views.”6 He told Stanford Reid that “leading members” of the committee were “cool” to his coming. He provided two reasons: Stanford had indicated that he could not see his way clear to accepting the call until 1 June 1955, and he was unwilling to promise he would accept a call should such be given. Laird was telling Reid only half the story, as he would later admit that these were only “two of the reasons.” Reid apparently knew more. He confided to Paul Woolley that Knox Church elders had heard some “Montreal gossip”7 which they were “weak enough to listen to.”8 What this gossip was one can only surmise: probably it had to do with his outspoken views, his strong personality (he would not be cowed by the Knox trustees), his historic Reformed theology, which many at Knox would not find congenial, but above all else the fact that he was not living the “separated life” and was known to enjoy alcoholic beverages in moderation. Given problems with a previous minister, some of this concern was understandable, but Reid was no alcoholic. Reid now turned to Paul Woolley and McGill Principal Cyril James for advice. After receiving their counsel he directly wrote Archie Stewart, as clerk of session of Knox Church, challenging the session and trustees to withdraw the invitation officially (since it had originally been an official invitation) or he would come as previously agreed.9 Laird responded that Reid could come as arranged but simply as “a guest minister.”10 He then added apologetically: “Let me assure you of our welcome and I believe that you will receive a splendid hearing.” Laird was caught in the middle. On Sunday, 31 October 1954, Stanford Reid duly preached at both morning and evening services in historic Knox Church, Toronto. He and Priscilla seem to have felt that once the congregation had met them and heard him preach, Reid could put any concerns expressed (and unexpressed) to rest. His willingness to be placed in such an awkward

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and ambiguous situation can be explained only because he considered Knox Church to have such a strategic location next to the University of Toronto and such a significant role to play within the Presbyterian Church in Canada that he was willing to risk rejection. As he wrote on his return to Montreal, “there is a tremendous opportunity for the minister of Knox Church to wield a great influence both among the students of Varsity as well as throughout the Presbyterian Church in Canada as a whole. Therefore, if the minister had both the opportunity to write and perhaps also to do a little teaching in the university, he would be in one of the most influential Christian positions in the country.”11 Before leaving Toronto, he went over to the university and, speaking to some history department members, received assurances that he would be welcome as a lecturer. Reid was aware that there were liabilities that came with being minister of a congregation with the history and reputation of Knox Church, Toronto. It was a proud congregation, as he had discovered when the committee of three met with him in Montreal and demanded to know whether, should they grace him with a call, he would guarantee acceptance. Aside from the minister whom, some claimed, had been driven to drink, another had decamped abruptly after a brief ministry to the United States, and the immediate past incumbent had died while still in his fifties, some said of a broken heart.12 As the first Presbyterian church in Toronto, Knox had a history going back to 1819. It was very well endowed because of the foresight, business sagacity, and generosity of Jesse Ketchum, a tanner who moved to Toronto from Buffalo before the War of 1812. Ketchum was able to buy up property during the conflict at fire sale prices. When his daughter married James Harris, Knox’s first minister, Ketchum gave, as a kind of dowry, a block of property to the church for a manse, glebe land for grazing the minister’s horse, and a sanctuary. In 1827 Ketchum legally set up his gift so that it could never be sold. Any future income from the property would be vested in a trust, administered by trustees who had absolute discretion over any revenues that might accrue. The only appeal Knox Church members would have against their decisions was to vote them out at the annual general congregational meeting. Vesting such power in a five-member board was contrary to Presbyterian polity, which gives the elders and presbytery ultimate authority. As the Ketchum Trust income increased, the trustees had power exceeding that of either minister or elders. This was the reason that Alexander McPherson, as secretary and treasurer, exercised such control: he and the other four trustees,13 not the congregation, paid the preacher. The Ketchum Trust income grew exponentially after 1905

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when the Robert Simpson Company, a downtown department store, leased the land, tore down the old church to build an extension, and Knox Church moved to a new site uptown on Spadina Avenue just south of Harbord Street. The Simpson lease was renewed every twentyone years. Each time the lease was renegotiated, and the ground rents increased, there appeared to be conflict. Financial muscle was combined with a sense of spiritual superiority. Knox had a flavour unique to Canadian Presbyterianism, a reputation well known to both Stanford and his father. American Henry Martyn Parsons had transformed the congregation when he arrived in 1881 into a church identified with many interdenominational causes. He gave Knox its strong missionary flavour, helping to establish the Niagara Bible Conference and the Toronto Bible Institute. His successor, A.B. Winchester, continued this emphasis, speaking at prophetic conferences and propagating the dispensational premillenialism of John Nelson Darby. Sir Mortimer Clark, lieutenant governor of Ontario, was an avid follower of his pastor’s millennial enthusiasms. Typically, a window in the new sanctuary built when Winchester was minister featured “Daniel propheta.” Winchester became minister extra muros in 1921 and devoted himself to Bible conference ministry and the setting up of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Dallas with Charles Scofield. His handpicked successor was John “Jock” Inkster, who came originally from the Orkney Islands. Inkster was no theologian but had pastoral gifts. Winchester’s theological commitments continued long after he died.14 During the 1950s vacancy the anniversary speakers were in 1953 Donald Grey Barnhouse of Tenth Presbyterian, Philadelphia, and in 1954 John Hess McComb of Broadway Presbyterian in Manhattan, who preached the rest of the anniversary week following Reid. Both were well-known dispensational fundamentalists and had close links with Dallas Seminary, the epicentre of such teaching. Theologically and culturally, they were as removed from Reid on the right as he was from Beare on the left. It appears that W.D. Reid either applied or was invited during the vacancy in 1921.15 He was either regarded as too old at the time or uncongenial given the unusual direction the church had taken. Four years later, the congregation, as a leading non-concurring church, became the venue of the continuing Presbyterian General Assembly when it reconvened after midnight on 10 June following the formation of the United Church in Canada. But Knox Church maintained an arm’s length relationship with the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Sometimes it simply ignored the denomination as irrelevant. On other occasions, it was wary or suspicious, separatist, and even antagonistic.16

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Reid was well known to some of the elders at Knox and there is some indication from the correspondence that they were hopeful that his coming would bring a new era to the congregation. Archie Stewart, a younger elder and clerk of session, wrote prior to his visit explaining that he had not been present at the fateful October 3 meeting and stated apologetically that Reid’s arrival visit “is being looked forward to with keen interest, although the prospect of a call being issued to you to fill the vacancy seems much less likely now than formerly.” Stewart and his father-in-law, W.J. Anderson, had joined with five other Knox elders17 in signing a commendation that appeared at the front of his 1947 pamphlet about cooperation with the Church of Christ in China. In 1948 Reid had preached the Sunday morning General Assembly sermon in Knox Church, with great appreciation expressed locally as well as nationally. Reid chose his messages on 31 October 1954 carefully as representative of what the congregation could expect rather than what they might like to hear. In the morning he spoke on “Revolutionary Christianity,” in the evening on “Our Liberty in Christ.” Both themes were controversial at Knox. A concept of a revolutionary Christianity that embraced and sought to transform society would be a new emphasis to many in the congregation that morning. Christian liberty – especially if it conflicted with the norms of the “separated life” – was positively offensive to pietist fundamentalists, as Reid had discovered back in Christmas of 1935 when he returned to Montreal from his first semester at Westminster Seminary. In spite of that, or perhaps because of the freshness of his approach, the messages were well received. Archie Stewart wrote afterwards, “We still have the happiest memories of your visit.”18 Three days later Reid wrote to Laird stating that “after prayerful consideration, I have decided that if the congregation were to offer me a fairly unanimous call, and would be willing to have me continue my writing, and perhaps even to have me teach a course at the university, I would be prepared to consider such an offer ‘as a regular Gospel call.’ I can hardly say that I would accept what I have not yet been offered, but I would certainly give it my most serious and favourable consideration.”19 John Laird wrote a short letter three weeks later stating that the session would be meeting on 25 November and “should there be any further developments regarding you, I will let you know immediately.”20 This was in reply to an inquiry from Reid as to why his bill at the Royal York Hotel, where he and Priscilla had been put up and which had gotten back to him for payment, had not been funded by the trustees as promised. A further impersonal letter from Alexander McPherson assured him the amount had finally been taken care of

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(“Trust this is satisfactory to you”) and further apologized for the delay of three weeks in sending the honorarium. McPherson enclosed a nominal amount and explained that the Special Services Committee of Session had not been willing to augment the sum as had been hoped. Stanford Reid went home and waited for the usual courtesy call from an interim moderator. The 25 November session meeting came and went but there was no further word from Laird. Stanford realized that he was probably not going to get the call. On 3 December 1954 Cyril James sent him an encouraging personal note, addressed to “Stan,” though signed formally “F. Cyril James.”21 “The indirect message that reached me yesterday in regard to Toronto, as you may imagine from our conversation, makes me feel very happy but I shall look forward to hearing a little more of the inside story when I see you.” Throughout the Christmas holidays Stanford and Priscilla anticipated some further communication. In late January he was invited to speak to the University of Toronto Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Archie Stewart, whose children were students at the university and active in the chapter, saw him and mentioned casually that Knox Church had finally called a minister. When Stanford arrived home the next evening Priscilla knew by the look on his face as he entered their suite at Douglas Hall that something had gone terribly wrong. Her entry in her diary for the day is very poignant: “He had seen the Stewarts of Knox Church and learned that Mr Fitch of Scotland had been called by the congregation. So that is that. It is good to know that a decision has been made because it is upsetting to have something like that hanging fire. Now we can get on with our other plans.”22 Stanford and Priscilla Reid had first been rejected by the wider church and now by the flagship congregation of evangelicals in the denomination. It was a double blow, made all the more painful by “Montreal gossip” that Stanford could neither contain nor refute. It could be argued that the Vacancy Committee knew that the fit was not right and that, temperamentally and theologically, Stanford Reid was not cut from the same cloth. But in later years, he would refer to the anguish he experienced at the time. The complete file of 1954 letters from Knox Church, Toronto was left in his papers at the end as a kind of witness to what might have been. In some ways, the experience was even more bitter than his previous rejection by the 1951 General Assembly. His had been the most outspoken, significant, and powerful voice within the Presbyterian Church in Canada contending for causes that Knox Church, Toronto held dear, risking his reputation and his future within the denomination. Now his erstwhile friends and allies had turned their back on him in a particularly humiliating manner.

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Reid refused to give up on the local church. He and Priscilla had chosen Ephraim Scott Memorial Church, in the Montreal suburb of Snowdon, some distance from Douglas Hall, as their home congregation when he left tmr. The minister at Ephraim Scott, Irishman Jack McBride,23 was someone with whom he could work. He played a vital part in the church’s life24 as an elder and was immediately appointed representative elder to presbytery, which made him eligible to be a voting member once more. At Ephraim Scott Church, Stanford Reid developed a Wednesday night study group, faithfully supported by those appreciative of his gift for teaching. By the time he had to give up the class, there were fifty in attendance. He kept a letter of appreciation signed by twelve members: “You have taught us to judge everything in the light of scriptural teaching, and the scriptures tell us to render unto every man his due; tribute to whom tribute is due; honour to whom honour, and to owe no man anything, but to love one another.” Speaking of the “gratitude, respect and devotion” in which he was held as minister and teacher, the letter provided three “subsidiary impressions.” First, Reid was an excellent teacher whose students were “heirs and recipients of the fruits of [his] years of preparation and training.” Second, in spite of his erudition, he still maintained “the common touch ... you command our respect because of your own respect for and loyalty to the great doctrines which it has been your privilege to present and ours to receive.” Third, his own character as a role model was inspiring: “love, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit ... we see these attributes struggling for pre-eminence in your own outlook, not clouded by fuzzy patterns of conventional behaviourism, but grounded firmly in the faith that was once delivered to the saints.” The tribute ended with a tribute to his skill as a pastor: “you have shared both our joys and sorrows, as friend, counsellor and guide ... our devotion is exacted by the knowledge that while you have contended earnestly for the faith, you have preached Christ, not of contention, but of love, in defense of the gospel.” The year 1955 was transitional for the Reids. Ever-popular as an after-dinner speaker, Stanford was increasingly invited to anniversary services throughout North America. In April the Reids journeyed to Chazy, New York, where he celebrated the 150th anniversary of the church there with a rousing sermon on “The Program of the Kingdom.” The kingdom of God was a subject to which Reid frequently turned during this period. It reinforced his desire, particularly as an academic, to take the whole of human culture captive for the glory of its Creator and Redeemer. He defined the kingdom as “the sphere of God’s power, God’s law, God’s gracious redemption, and the sphere of God’s time.” To Reid this definition then imposed an obligation on the

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believer: “This means that in the whole of our life we are not to place our own profit, ease, pleasure or popularity first. His will must be the chief end of man. Thus all life is to be brought into subordination to him and to His will: faith in Christ, honesty, fair play, kindness and the like are to be exercised in His sight. This seeking of the Kingdom is our primary objective.”25 A variation on the church’s kingdom mandate was a message on “Christ the Lord of the Church” in which he expounded Colossians 1 at the 104th anniversary of Cooke’s Church, Toronto, the downtown centre for expatriate evangelical Irish Presbyterians. That summer the Reids took a group of students to Britain for a sixweek on-site inspection of many of the places featured in his lectures. Such guided tours were comparatively new and a pedagogical coup for Stanford. He and Priscilla then journeyed to Bermuda, where the Presbyterian church in Hamilton needed a locum in the absence of the minister.26 Reid lived in the manse and preached each Sunday for almost two months. A student for the ministry from the church, MacArthur Shields, lived with the Reids. He remembered Reid working on the manuscript of a biography of Robert Barton of Over Barnton, which would later appear as Skipper From Leith: “He was very disciplined in his work habits and would only leave for the beach when he had put in the number of hours of composition he had scheduled,” Shields recalled.27 Reid spent his summer in Bermuda doing consecutive Biblical exposition, perhaps under the influence of the preaching style of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. It was highly effective and was very well received. Strangely, it was never repeated, partly because Reid never had another opportunity for weekly ministry. “The Christians’ Riches in This World” from I Corinthians 1:4–6 began the series. He followed it up with a message on “The Undivided Christ” from verses 10 through 17. “This is what we need: true faith in Christ as saviour, not worldly wisdom about Him, but simple and humble submission unto His Word and faith in His work.” The message seemed to ignite the congregation. But the following week, on verses 26–31, was more controversial: “Seemed to go very well, although I do not think some liked what I said” was his notation. “This is very practical for it means that we are to go day by day witnessing where and when we can, knowing that to the world our Gospel is foolishness, but that God can and will make it effective as we faithfully manifest Christ to those around us.” Following a speech at the Hamilton Rotary Club on the Geneva Conference of “the Big Four,” which The Royal Gazette picked up in an editorial, Reid carried on for his three last Sundays in Bermuda in I Corinthians 2: “The Heart of the Christian Witness” (verse 2), “The

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Mystery of the Gospel” (verses 6 through 10), and “The Christian’s Foolish Confidence” (verses 12 and 13). He spoke of witnessing in a climate of rejection “because the gospel is a mystery” and of the confidence in God’s sovereign grace, through God’s Holy Spirit and for God’s human witnesses. He returned home from Bermuda to an autumn that was crowded with activity: research and writing, a full academic load, supervision of twenty graduate and honours students, and a demanding number of speaking engagements. For relaxation, he and Priscilla found relief in weekends at the Lake Placid Club in northern New York state. As guest of the club, he preached on Sunday and provided occasional light academic fare lecturing to members on request. While 1955 was “a good year,” as Priscilla noted in her diary, 1956 would be an exciting one for her husband. Billy Graham had drawn large crowds to his evangelistic campaigns. Graham now hoped to restore credibility and intellectual integrity to North American fundamentalism with a new magazine that would be a rallying point for what his friend Harold John Ockenga was calling “the new Evangelicalism.” Christianity Today, as it was named, was heavily subsidized by oil magnate J. Howard Pew. Appearing every fortnight, its attractive format and appealing content would forever banish the yellow journalism of John R. Rice and his Sword of the Lord, T.T. Shields’ Gospel Witness, and Carl McIntire’s Christian Beacon. No longer would evangelical journalism be characterized by tacky format and strident polemics. Thanks to Howard Pew’s deep pockets, an initial run of a quarter of a million copies would be mailed out to every Protestant minister in North America. The editorial staff of Christianity Today was as impressive as the vision. Carl Henry was chosen editor. With his 1947 book Uneasy Conscience of American Fundamentalism, Henry had helped end the isolation of fundamentalism.28 Billy Graham’s own father-in-law, Dr L. Nelson Bell, became executive editor. Bell had been a medical missionary to China under the southern Presbyterian Church. Editor of the Southern Presbyterian Journal, he had a strong conservative theological and political agenda. The third member of the Christianity Today troika was the one most significant for Reid’s own future. His old friend from Montreal days, J. Marcellus Kik, had been appointed associate editor. Since moving from Canada, Kik had been serving a small Reformed church in northern New Jersey. It was Kik who suggested Reid as an editor at large of Christianity Today. It was a significant opportunity that provided him entry to a whole new circle of readers.

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The first issue of Christianity Today appeared on 15 October 1956. It was an impressive lineup: Dutch theologian G.C. Berkouwer on the “Changing Climate of European Theology,” Billy Graham affirming “Biblical Authority in Evangelism,” and a ringing jeremiad by the editor on “The Fragility of Freedom in the West.” Graham in a subsequent letter to Henry dismissed the article as “obscurity reaching for profundity.”29 Issue number two, 29 October, gave Reid top billing, leading a cast of five of whom he was probably the least known. Joining him were W.E. Sangster, the English Methodist preacher on “Can We Get ‘Peace of Mind’?”, and radio evangelist Ernest Manning, the Social Credit Premier of Alberta, on “The Integrity of Nations.” To please right-wing sponsor Howard Pew, United States Republican politician William Knowland contributed a piece asking “Admit Red China?” with a resounding and inevitable “No.” And the Korean truce negotiator William Harrison shared his perspective on “Christianity and Peace in Our Day.” It was a stellar caste of evangelicals who had demonstrated that they could be intellectually reputable with standing and stature. “The Reformation and the Common Man” was the subject Reid either chose or was given. In the article he advocated a populist and politically active Christian faith that was quite different from some of the other contributors and clearly diverged from the politics of J. Howard Pew. He began by referring to John Calvin (a hero of Pew’s, so he was on safe ground there) as “the more thorough and consistent thinker” of the Reformers for whom “all men, whether within or without the Church, were basically and fundamentally equal.” His conclusion was predictable: “Join modern materialistic and existential forms of thought” and destroy the Reformation concept of “the common man” and you have “cut ourselves off from the roots of our democracy, and if we are not grafted back onto the main stalk, the ‘common man’ in Western society will once more become the ‘faceless one,’ without personality or identity.”30 From 1956 to 1974 Stanford Reid made twenty-nine contributions to Christianity Today. Some were lead articles, others were news items. In the first issue he joined G.C. Berkouwer, John Gerstner, and Phillip Hughes as columnists in a “Review of Current Religious Thought.”31 He contributed to a column titled “Lessons for Our Times” in 1962.32 He participated in symposia, such as that of August 1957 on “The Body Christ Heads”33 about church renewal. Eight of his articles were like the first, historical, dealing mostly with the Reformation. His 1960 piece on the 400th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation was one of his clearest.34 In another offering, he described the Reformation as “The Greatest Revival Since Pentecost.”35 Occasionally, he wrote on

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current events, as in his 1959 contribution on “Christians and the United Nations”36 or another one in 1964 on “The Next Ten Years.”37 As could be expected, ecumenism was a recurring theme. Three articles in 1971 and 1972, where he was on far from familiar territory, seemed to provide Reid an opportunity to let off steam.38 One of them, “Preaching Is Social Action,” was particularly unfortunate as it appeared Reid was favouring talk over practical demonstrations of Christian compassion. He had lost touch with where evangelicals were going in their thinking. Those three articles may have been responsible for a distancing of the magazine from Reid. In the mid–1970s, he was – to use his own words – “unceremoniously dumped”39 from the masthead. He counterattacked: “I feel the paper tends to be something which fits in with the ultra conservative fundamentalist type of thinking.”40 To another friend, he queried whether Christianity Today had “a definite antagonism to Reformed theology.”41 He had little sympathy for editor Harold Lindsell’s Battle for The Bible when the controversial and confrontational book, in favour of Biblical inerrancy, appeared in 1976. The magazine did allow him one final swan song. On 24 October 198242 his final contribution to Christianity Today appeared as an editorial titled “The Divisions in Christendom.” For anyone who knew Stanford Reid, his opening question was gratuitous: “Are objections to unity silly or based on substance?” A reader in Oregon complained about “W. Stanford Reid’s caricature of the ecumenical movement.”43 It was his final article. Two years later, when he sent in an article titled “Is ‘Inerrancy’ the Right Word?” (for him, it was not), the submission was turned down “after a good deal of heart searching.” He tried to find an alternative journal willing to publish it,44 but it was the end of a connection that had once made Stanford Reid a prominent member of the evangelical establishment. In the summer of 1956 the Reids returned to Europe. The major commitment of the summer was Stanford’s address to the Tyndale Fellowship, at a Christian study centre in Cambridge, on the subject “Christianity and Scholarship.” A letter Priscilla wrote to her mother from Portugal at the time survives. She describes their summer in a somewhat breathless manner. She and Stanford had been to all the countries of Western Europe except Norway. Driving in a small Renault, they found “a lot of twisty roads and some steep climbs ... Still it is a lot of fun, and we have certainly seen a great deal of the country.”45 Stanford had been in correspondence with a priest in Santiago while researching the Spanish adventurer Robert Barton, so, en route to Portugal, they had stopped off at the cathedral and met him. Then they slipped over

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the border into Portugal and made their way to the Protestant Seminary outside Lisbon. That Sunday Stanford preached in one of the city’s Portuguese Presbyterian churches through an interpreter. The letter concludes: “In about six weeks we should be home again ... Give our best to all the folk at Douglas Hall.” During that year, there were increasing worries about Priscilla’s mother’s health. “There is no way of looking into the future and so we shall go ahead a day at a time leaving our troubles and anxieties in God’s hands.” Priscilla’s mother was to live for another year. Two days before her death, Priscilla wrote in her diary: “I shall miss her terribly because we have always been very close.” On 4 October at the Montreal General Hospital, following a stroke, Helena Edna Willman Lee quietly slipped away. Three days later she was laid to rest in the family plot, “which stands in the corner of Grandfather’s old garden” in Calumet Methodist Churchyard. “Everyone is so kind,” Priscilla commented. “I was remembering that Christ has gone ahead, and has taken the sting out of death.”46 For an only daughter, without children of her own, her mother’s death was especially poignant. The death of Priscilla’s mother. and the continuing tussle between Quebec Premier Duplessis and the federal government as to whether McGill could accept federal grants, combined to unsettle the Reids. 1957 began with an inquiry to the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Dalhousie University with regard to a forthcoming vacancy due to the retirement of the senior history professor there. A leisurely correspondence followed.47 That March the Reids motored to Boston, where they made inquiries about a position at Boston University. During the summer, Stanford corresponded with the University of British Columbia, which was then undergoing major expansion. The reason he gave for seeking a move was always the same in this correspondence: “I am very dubious about the future of English-speaking Protestant higher education here in the Province of Quebec. At the present moment we are pretty much in M. Duplessis’s pocket and that receptacle may become rather confining before too long.”48 None of these approaches appears to have produced results. There was a further nudge to move when, in September 1958, as he was hosting at Douglas Hall the eighth congress of the Universities of the Commonwealth, Sir Edward Appleton, vice-chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, told him “he was wasted in his present position.” Later he heard that Appleton had recommended him to be vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies. In her diary, Priscilla wrote: “Would Stan ever be happy merely as an administrator? Stan has to have a sense of calling, and to take a job, even a big one, that kept him so tied up that he would be unable to teach or write would be harmful if not dangerous.”49

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Throughout the 1950s Stanford had continued to play a vital role in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The academic world might provide more openness to his restless energy. A prestigious American magazine might enlist his services. His own denomination and an historic evangelical church had both passed him over. In spite of the pain of rejection when a request for help came, he was ready and willing to respond positively. “I have not deserted the church nor left the ministry, but am carrying out my responsibilities,” he wrote to a denominational official.50 It is the substantial contribution that he made as a Canadian Presbyterian to his church during his years as full-time academic at McGill to which we now turn.

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9 Persevering Presbyterian, 1952–1965 Denominational Promoter and Gadfly Journalist

“The Protestant Church today throughout the world is troubled with anaemia ... There is a new need for that enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and aggressiveness which characterized the sixteenth century Reformation.”1 Stanford Reid might have left the active ministry but he would still have his bully pulpit, for he and several friends were launching a new magazine. Reformation Today made its debut in October 1951. “The Protestant Reformers always insisted that the Church must keep close to the Scriptures as the only true basis of Christian knowledge and feeling. It was as a result of their Biblical studies that they were able to formulate fundamental Protestant doctrines such as: the authority of the Bible, justification by faith, and salvation by grace. In the belief that what the Church needs today, is first of all to return to those basic Reformation doctrines, we are publishing this paper.” Even though Anglican academic Donald Masters was an associate editor (along with Presbyterians Mariano DiGangi and David W. Kerr), for the next three years Reformation Today emphasized Reid’s continuing concerns about the direction of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. There were issues that required the immediate attention of such an independent voice. The first of these came immediately to hand. In May 1951, three missionary couples had abruptly left British Guiana. There had been fundamental disagreement between them and Mission Board Secretary W.A. Cameron as to their mandate. Cameron, an oldstyle Presbyterian, came down heavily in favour of educational work, while the missionaries saw themselves as evangelists. They took issue with a policy statement from Toronto that assured parents the purpose

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of mission schools was to educate, not “make Christians” or even build up the church.2 Reformation Today raised uncomfortable questions about Mission Board policy. As the health of recently retired Knox College principal Walter Bryden deteriorated, it was clear an era was coming to an end. A December 1951 editorial by David Kerr expressed concern and appreciation. “We have not always agreed with the positions he has taken, but we feel that where he has been critical of the Westminster Confession of Faith, it was often because of what he felt were its deficiencies rather than its errors. His real humility and sincerity as well as his wide knowledge have endeared him to the many students at Knox who sat under him and have gained for him a wide circle of friends in the church. Dr Bryden has done a great deal to make the Presbyterian Church theologically conscious.”3 In further issues, Reid’s polemics were predictable: “For true church unity, what we need is not a big super-church with common organizations, liturgies and orders. What we need is a spiritual reawakening based upon a return to the doctrines of the Scriptures.”4 Or again, “Two lamentable features are noticeable among Protestants today. One is uncertainty about what they believe. The other is contempt for the historic creeds and confessions of the Christian church. The two are closely associated.”5 Another article, titled “The Sin of Vagueness,” called for “clear, distinct and shining witness to the glorious grace of God.”6 The magazine advocated the value of an historical perspective for faith: “Reformation Today has frequently emphasized the importance for Christians of a knowledge of history. It is a point that cannot be too frequently reiterated.” Associate editor and fellow historian Donald Masters took strong issue with “a school of thought among Evangelicals which maintains that a knowledge of the past is of little value in the study of Christian doctrine and that an open Bible is the only valid means of arriving at Divine Truth.”7 Other articles were less in character. The Reids had a Puritan view about celebrating December 25 as the birthday of Jesus. Their choice of cards always featured the non-religious aspect of Christmas. The holiday was, however, an opportunity for outreach and every year the December issue of Reformation Today would feature an article that was pitched to the unchurched and showed Stanford at his most creative. One titled “The Inn-keeper’s Memories” put words in the mouth of the person who had “no room in the inn” for the Baby Jesus. Reid also commented on current events. After the closely contested British election of 1951 he rhapsodized that “Churchill is back!” The death of George VI the following year featured an item entitled “The King Is Dead.” Following the coronation of Elizabeth II

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in 1953 he wrote “The Coronation Is Over.” After Joseph Stalin’s death and the revelations of genocide that followed, he asked the question, in a lead article in April of 1954 one of the final issues, “Should We Deal With Russia?” By that point, Reformation Today had run its course, funds were low, and circulation had declined. The magazine folded in late 1954. But, in its day, intense reader reaction to Reformation Today suggests that it made an impact and that it was read. Stanford’s style was aggressive, and criticism invariably followed. “The primary reasons so we have been told,” Stanford responded, “for people objecting to Reformation Today, and some even advocating that it be suppressed, is that the paper raises disturbing issues in the church, and that it is critical in its attitude.” The 1950s were not a time to be negative about the church. There was an upswing in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Things looked very encouraging. One hundred and eleven churches were constituted in the decade. By 1960 the overseas missionary contingent numbered seventy-four, a level it would never attain again. Priscilla wrote in her diary at mid-decade: “Ever since Union in 1925 our Church has had a minority complex. Now, for the first time it is starting to expand.”8 By 1965 the Presbyterian Church in Canada had gown to 202,000 members. The fourteen years Stanford Reid was full-time at McGill, from 1951 to 1965, were the high-water mark for all mainline Protestant Canadian denominations. Still, nagging doubts remained among Stanford Reid’s allies in the Presbytery of Montreal about the spiritual health of the church. They were sceptical as to whether the popularity of the church as an institution was a signal of real revival. One by one they left Montreal. Some, such as Lyall Detlor and Marcellus Kik, were disillusioned with the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Others accepted calls elsewhere: Quincy McDowell9 went to Providence, Rhode Island, and Mariano DiGangi10 to Hamilton. Stanford continued to be active in presbytery as representative elder from the Ephraim Scott Memorial Church. He discovered that elders had more freedom to speak and were less inhibited by professional and congregational constraints. Reid felt that as a member of Session (board of elders) and not its moderator, he had more influence and was taken more seriously. In addition to playing the piano at every meeting (badly but confidently), and serving as an interim moderator (in churches without a minister), he also took a vital part in debate and chaired two significant committees. The Evangelism and Social Action Committee of presbytery suited Reid’s wide-ranging political and social interests. In 1954 there was lit-

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tle going on in the country, in Quebec, or in the city of Montreal, that deserved a response from the church, which Reid, as convener, did not address.11 In January he prepared an overture to the government denouncing the appointment of a Canadian representative to the Vatican. He also protested the reported banning by the Quebec Board of Film Censors of the film Martin Luther “in the interests of social peace” and because the film was “controversial.” “Such a ban is very clearly and definitely a curtailment of the freedom of the people of this Province to see this great historical and religious production ... if this ban is carried out it means that the Board of Film Censors is arrogating to itself powers entirely beyond its right. It is saying that whatever does not happen to suit its own particular taste, philosophy or religious views, should be forbidden. Moreover, if this totalitarian philosophy is accepted, any other board could, in principle, be established to censor books, newspapers or even sermons. Thus it is the beginning of the end of freedom of communication.”12 The next month Reid reacted to provincial legislation that made it an offense for anyone publicly to “abuse” a religious group, and to another statute declassifying labour unions deemed to be “tolerating Communists.” In March, the committee was advocating “literature tables” in congregations, to provide pamphlets and books about Protestantism. The following month he presented an overture to General Assembly requesting such “popular religious literature ... dealing with Presbyterian principles and history.” By May, concern was expressed about the need for the church to advertise. By autumn, he was differentiating “holy days” from “holy seasons” so that statutory holidays in predominately Roman Catholic Montreal could have a broad base of interdenominational support. He cited the Westminster Confession to say that only Sunday observance was commanded in scripture. By the end of the year, the committee returned to the Martin Luther film as tensions between Roman Catholics and Protestants in the city escalated. His subsequent leadership of a second presbytery committee was highly congenial for him. The Committee on Church Extension gave Stanford Reid a constructive opportunity to demonstrate that he was not always carping and negative. Establishing new congregations in growing suburbs had been his vision since the beginning of the tmr congregation. In November 1953, he supported a petition to presbytery of seventy-one individuals for the erection of the first Presbyterian congregation on the West Island. When this church, St Columbaby-the-Lake in Valois, got into financial difficulties while building a first unit, Reid sprang into action. The result of his concern was the establishment of a Church Extension Committee. He was asked to be

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its convener. In the postwar boom subdivisions were going up around Montreal. He was interviewed by the Montreal Star and shared his vision: “Increased numbers of English-speaking Canadians [are] moving into Quebec urban centres where industry [is] expanding. In Montreal mushrooming communities such as St Laurent, Côte des Neiges and Western Notre Dame de Grace [are] without adequate church facilities while on the metropolis’ fringes, such as the Lakeshore and Ville Jacques Cartier areas, where thousands of dwellings have been erected, there [are] wide districts in which there [are] no churches at all.”13 The year after the Valois Church was established, residents in St Laurent, near the burgeoning Canadair plant, initiated a new church on O’Brien Boulevard. With a committee now in place Stanford pioneered strategic church-planting. Baie d’Urfé, further west along the Lakeshore beyond Valois, was targeted as a first project. The community was chosen as one of the only towns in Quebec without a church of any denomination. Reid secured the appointment of Calvin Elder, a 1956 graduate of Knox College, as the organizing minister.14 Land was then purchased by the committee.15 The sod for the church’s first unit was turned on a wintry March Sunday in 1957 with Stanford Reid looking on. The architect designed the building so that the sanctuary could eventually be expanded out into the hall to seat 800. There would be no second unit, as the congregation disbanded in the 1990s and the building was sold to a Taoist temple. Where there was once a cross, a communion table, and pews, there are now images of Chinese deities. All that could not have been conceived of in the 1950s. Those were halcyon days for church planters. The statistics were positive, upward, and impressive; North America was in the midst of a church boom. Presbytery approved a target of $250,000 for capital for new churches in Montreal. “Presbyterians,” Reid was quoted as saying, “have never been known for living in great poverty. I think this $250,000 is a rather pitiable amount to be raised by the 14,000 members of our Presbytery.”16 Reid also provided another motivation for giving: “The United Church is talking in terms of half a million dollars for their extension work in this area.” Reid set about finding the money and encouraged a competition between the two largest churches in the presbytery: suburban Knox Crescent and Kensington and downtown St Andrew and St Paul, to see who could raise the most. Other projects followed: Pierrefonds, Ile Perrot, St Michel, Duvernay, Fabreville. Sadly, over the next decade, the spectacular development tailed off, sputtered, and eventually died. The Presbytery of Montreal forty years later has been reduced to twenty per cent of its former size. Stanford Reid’s church extension legacy has all but disappeared.

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The reasons for the decline of 1950s Montreal Presbyterianism are many and complex.17 The anglophone exodus, the rapid secularization of Quebec society, the sidelining of the mainline churches – all played their part. But Stanford would say that he knew it would happen. In 1953, he predicted that the church would self-destruct: “Today the Church is full of vagueness. It does not want to hurt people’s feelings. It wants to appeal to everybody. Therefore, it becomes so general in the teachings, so vague in its proclamation that no one pays any attention, for it has nothing to say.”18 When Reid resigned as convener of the committee in 1958, Montreal Presbytery Clerk Ritchie Bell wrote him to express “the unbounded gratitude of the Court for your energetic and conscientious leadership of the Church Extension Committee since its inception in 1955. By your vision, the Presbyterian Church within the bounds of this Presbytery has been enlarged and strengthened, and by your determination and tenacity, plans for the future have been well laid. When things were at a low ebb within the Presbytery, you fired the enthusiasm of the Court to launch out and undertake new ventures.”19 Stanford Reid was being freed by the Presbytery of Montreal to respond to a call from the national church. He was to make a major contribution to the Presbyterian Church in Canada as secretary of a committee to streamline its administrative procedures. His work in church extension in Montreal made him aware that the finances of the expanding denomination were straining to keep up with its explosive growth. For the next two years, he provided vital leadership in setting up a denominational administrative council. For a church whose traditions had been egalitarian and democratic, it was a revolutionary abdication of some of the powers vested in congregations and presbyteries. Arguably, as an outsider and a critic of church bureaucracy, Stanford Reid facilitated the whole process and provided credibility for sceptics and doubters. His was not the only voice raised about the archaic management procedures of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. In 1958, the General Assembly received an overture from Vancouver urging the hiring of management consultants. The idea came originally from the fertile mind of Judge Manson, an outspoken anti-Unionist Presbyterian. He was a Westerner alienated by “Toronto do-nothings” who had failed to assist him in restoring the Western church to its pre-1925 strength. Manson, like his friend Lloyd Henderson in Manitoba, wanted to reestablish Presbyterian churches in every town and city west of Winnipeg. The 1958 overture drew the attention of the denomination to the fact that the national church was now a million-dollar operation.

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C. Ritchie Bell (courtesy pcca)

It was expected to grow rapidly, but only if administrative issues were addressed. It cited 1946–48 recommendations by an Administrative Needs Committee and 1956 and 1957 overtures that had been ignored. There was a “need for both economy and efficiency in the operation of this complex organization.” What was required was outside professional administrative help. To bring about the changes “an active Administrative Needs Committee to appraise our Church’s administrative structure and financial policies and bring in recommendations to the next General Assembly”20 should be formed. The Assembly responded positively, setting up the Special Committee on the Financial Structure and Administrative Organization and Procedures of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The committee was

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empowered to engage a firm of management consultants who would examine the financial and administrative practices of the boards and committees of the General Assembly. C. Ritchie Bell of Montreal was appointed convener, and he asked Stanford Reid to serve as secretary. It was a fruitful partnership. Bell had the capacity to bring out the best in individuals and his relationship with Stanford was no exception. Stanford Reid himself was excited by the new challenge and pleased to be asked to fulfil such a significant role. The years of being rejected by the Presbyterian Church in Canada were over. “In 1958,” he reflected subsequently, “things changed a bit as that year I was appointed to the special committee on the administration of the Church.”21 The committee immediately hired the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse as consultants. By March of the following year their sweeping recommendations were presented. Price Waterhouse began their report with a quotation from Deane Johnston,22 convener of the General Board of Missions: “Why has it come about that after thirty-three years of labour, effort, and prayer, the Presbyterian Church is still a comparatively weak and ineffective instrument in the hands of God for the up building of His Church in Canada?” Their response to Johnston’s question was to point out a confusion between legislative and administrative functions that led to inefficiency and micro management. “The General Assembly has attempted to solve complex problems of administration in the fields of finance, property management, salary schedules, employee benefits, etc., to the extent that the larger problems of Church polity and longrange planning have been afforded little if any time for serious deliberation and attention.”23 The remedy was “a major change in the administrative organization of the Church. A plan of organization is needed which will define the major functions of the church and assign them to responsible groups working in harmony for the overall objective of Christian mission.” The organizational grid called for six departments: Christian Education, Home Missions, Overseas and Inter-Church Relations, Personnel and Training, Administration, and Communications. Each would have a full-time salaried director, as well as a chairman and board appointed by the General Assembly. There would also be a “church council” to oversee and coordinate operations of the whole. Surprisingly, the 1959 General Assembly approved these sweeping changes without opposition. The reorganization of the denomination, as proposed, had to be sent down to presbyteries “under the Barrier Act,” as required by Presbyterian church polity. It was a major step forward. The following year, the General Assembly was informed that out of forty-eight presbyteries, twenty-eight had concurred with the

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recommendations, ten were opposed (including the Presbytery of Westminister, which had initiated the study), and ten had not sent in a response. Recommendations and suggestions from the presbyteries were considered. One suggestion changed the name “Church Council” to “Administrative Council.” The Special Committee agreed that there was a need to clarify that it was not its intention to take power away from presbyteries or the General Assembly. Other concerns expressed were the need for more women on the standing committees, “a recommendation of which the Special Committee approves,” and the need for a comptroller. Stanford Reid’s volunteer work as secretary was arduous. He would take an overnight sleeper to Toronto for a Saturday meeting, return that night and preach the next day as guest in a Montreal pulpit. By Monday he was back lecturing at McGill. His work setting up the Administrative Council brought him new respect in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He had made a positive contribution and helped ensure not only its administrative coherence but also its future viability. When he presented the Special Committee report to the 1960 General Assembly in Guelph (he was a commissioner), he was praised by everyone for his efforts. It was a personal triumph. There was a general recognition across the church that the Ritchie Bell-Stanford Reid partnership had been a great success.24 Reid remained on the new Administrative Council until 1964. As a member he was able to make a further significant contribution to the church, implementing the concerns for a denominational comptroller. The 1960 Special Committee report had been specific: “One other matter which should also be stressed is that the Special Committee is convinced that the church must appoint at the very earliest possible date, someone who can take over the duties of Comptroller and also supervise the work of various small committees dealing with financial matters of the Church. It may take some time for the church to find a suitable man, but the appointment of such a person is absolutely necessary.”25 On Reid’s recommendation Basil Edward Howell became the first comptroller of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Howell, who had taken early retirement as assistant comptroller of Bell Telephone, had been ordained recently and was serving an extension congregation north of Montreal. When he came to Toronto, Howell restored financial integrity to the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Stanford maintained that Basil Howell made the “free-spending bureaucrats” of the denomination accountable. Reid said his nomination was one of the best things that ever happened to the church. Howell served for almost a decade until retirement in 1971.

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In the autumn of 1960, the quatrocentenary of the Scottish Reformation was celebrated worldwide by Presbyterian and Reformed churches. In Canada, Reid was an obvious choice as speaker for rallies and worship services being planned. He responded positively to each invitation, viewing them as an opportunity to call the church back to its roots. The first celebration took place at the 1960 Synod of the Maritime Provinces meeting in New Glasgow, Pictou County, in the heart of New Scotland. A fortnight later, he used the same material to address the Synod of Toronto and Kingston. These talks were collected and published as The Scottish Reformation. There were three chapters: “The Scottish Reformation: A National Revolution,” “John Knox and The Scottish Reformation,” and “The Scottish Reformation After Four Hundred Years.” Reid’s conclusion was that “as a church the Presbyterian Church in Canada must take into account the fact that the Scottish Reformation still controls and influences much of its life. On the other hand, not infrequently when we most explicitly lay claim to follow the Reformation we vary most widely from its basic spirit and outlook. Consequently it seems that in attempting to evaluate the Reformation after four hundred years we must attempt to look at its nature and its character, to see exactly how far we agree with and how far we have wandered away from the faith and action of our fathers.”26 Further rallies followed. In Ottawa he was quoted in the press the morning after a big celebration at historic St Andrew’s Church across from the Canadian Senate building: “The reformation of the Scottish Reformed Church never ceased. It moved on to our time and will continue to reform.” In November, he travelled to another historic St Andrew’s Church, this time in Fort William, Ontario, on Lake Superior. His final speech was given on home ground at a crowded Presbytery of Montreal rally at the Church of St Andrew and St Paul. On each occasion, he echoed sentiments close to his heart: “We in our day and age with much greater means of communication and much greater readiness perhaps to hear the Gospel have many advantages not enjoyed by the reformers. Yet they, going forth in faith, received God’s blessing and accomplished much in an amazingly short time. If we too serve, faithful and obedient to His command, we shall see His blessings come upon us. This perhaps is the most important aspect of the Scottish reformers’ message to us. The church must be the church, but it can fulfil its obligations and responsibilities only as it holds forth Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord to this day and generation.”27 Presbyterian College asked the 1955 General Assembly for permission to raise $215,000 to refurbish its decaying building. Stanford Reid as

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an elder commissioner took a prominent part in the debate. He voiced his scepticism as someone knowledgeable about the upkeep of university buildings. “Personally I don’t think it could be fixed up for less than $500,000.” He saw the recommendation as “the usual piecemeal policy of plugging the dykes.” Reid went on to make an amendment, proposing that a committee be appointed to provide a blueprint for theological education for the Presbyterian Church in Canada: “We must start planning a 25-year program for theological education not just in the present centres of Toronto and Montreal but on the west and east coasts, too.””28 To head such a committee he proposed his friend Professor Hilda Neatby29 of the University of Saskatchewan. She had impressive credentials. Her recent critique of Canadian education, So Little for The Mind, had stimulated a great deal of discussion. Neatby was also a Presbyterian, a member of St Andrew’s Church in Saskatoon. Her conservatism extended beyond education to theology. What Hilda Neatby might have done for theological education in the Presbyterian Church in Canada can only be conjectured as Reid’s amendment failed. The prospect of refurbishing Presbyterian College aroused great interest at McGill. The college was strategically located. Comprised of three lots, 3485 and 3491 McTavish and 970 McGregor, it stood in the path of any westward expansion of the university. The McGill governors sent a letter expressing interest in acquiring the property for future development. Their proposal had been considered by the college board on 4 May, but the recommendation for permission to renovate went ahead anyway to the 1956 Assembly. In early 1957, McGill Principal Cyril James wrote expressing interest in the property. Again the board, meeting on 26 February, was cool to any idea that the college site was for sale. Cyril James wrote a further letter in April stressing that if the property should come onto the market, McGill would appreciate the right of first refusal. In April the board said that, while it did not have ultimate authority, it would keep the university informed. To what extent Stanford Reid facilitated discussion between the McGill governors, Principal James, and the Presbyterian College Board is hard to gauge. Certainly, as he claimed subsequently, he was there behind the scenes assisting in the negotiations and bringing his friend Cyril James up to speed on the complexities of Presbyterian church government and politics. It took until 1960 for the Presbyterian College board and the church at large to realize that, by failing to maintain its building over many years, the College had little alternative but to sell and take advantage of any offer the McGill governors might make. Even then, one board member, moved by “sentimental attachment,”30 did everything he could to obstruct any change.

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On 30 May 1960, the Presbyterian College Board met and considered a new proposal from the McGill board of governors that would exchange properties and provide half a million dollars for a new building. In place of the historic McTavish Street location, the college would be given property at the corner of Milton and University Streets. The board of the college accepted the offer and approval was given by the 1960 General Assembly. It was soon discovered that half a million dollars was really inadequate for a new building. McGill then raised its ante to $600,000, thanks to behind the scenes work by Stanford Reid, and the deal was finally cut following a meeting of the Synod of Montreal and Ottawa in the autumn. As it turned out, even $600,000 was inadequate and Ritchie Bell was called on to help raise a further quarter of a million dollars. Reid was dismissive of the negotiations carried on by the board and maintained that Principal Robert Lennox could have gotten more out of McGill. He felt Presbyterian College had a trump card in its location and that McGill would have gone to any lengths to acquire the property as it responded to rising university enrollment of the 1960s. The whole process of relocation confirmed his feelings of frustration at the way that the college was being run as well as the theological education it provided. He encouraged McGill students he could influence to go elsewhere, as he had, for their theological training. Relocation did not end the problems of Presbyterian College. Within two years, Robert Lennox and Joseph McLelland had both resigned as a result of internal strife at the college between staff and the board. Longstanding problems had come to a head because of a nomination made to the 1962 General Assembly of a professor of New Testament. Lennox and McLelland felt the nomination represented a breach of promise as the position had already been offered to Charles Hay. The board was “deeply divided” about the whole matter. The General Assembly’s response was to appoint two committees: a special committee under Deane Johnston to investigate the immediate issue, the conflict at Presbyterian College, and another committee with a broader mandate, terms and membership to be set up by the Administrative Council. Among the issues to be discussed were whether other theological colleges were needed (in the Maritimes or in Vancouver). This committee was to look into the appointment of theological professors. Preparation for ministry – pre-theological, postgraduate, special ministry, and the unique needs of older candidates – was also within their mandate. The brief concluded with a summary statement: the committee could make recommendations about the whole “approach to theological training with special reference to the kind and quality of the present theological education.”31

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That mandate provided an opportunity to look at an issue that had been a continuing concern for Stanford Reid since he first walked out of Frank Beare’s class back in 1934. He happily accepted an invitation by the Administrative Council, at its October 1962 meeting, to become chairman of what became known as the General Assembly’s Committee on the Structure of Theological Education. William Lawson of St Andrew’s Church, Windsor, Ontario, was named secretary. Council representatives were Ted Johnson and Reid’s long-time friend Professor John Wevers of the University of Toronto. Other members included appointees by both senate and board of Presbyterian, Knox, and Ewart colleges. The committee was duly constituted and Stanford Reid, as a commissioner,32 presented its interim report to the 1963 General Assembly. The committee called for an appointment procedure that would have the support of a majority of college faculty, board and, senate. Guidelines were set up as well as procedures for nominations from presbyteries. It scrutinized membership on the senate and board of the colleges. It also determined that “whereas the Church has not the resources either in men or money, the Church take no steps at the present time to establish any further institutions of theological training and that, should such an additional institution be considered necessary at some future date, this step be taken only after it has been approved by a majority of the presbyteries.”33 The first two recommendations were referred back for consultation to the special committee dealing specifically with Presbyterian College. By the 1964 General Assembly, the mandate of the Committee on Structure was defined as “suggestions for the improvement of theological education.”34 The following year, the committee held three meetings. Two specific topics were discussed: “the need for the theological colleges to be constantly self-critical” and the concern that “the church courts exercise more care in accepting and recommending men and women for full-time service in the Church.”35 As well, it considered the need to integrate regulations in the two colleges but, after consideration, left the matter alone, stating that “a different type of committee is needed.” Having completed what it thought was its mandate, the Committee on Structure requested the 1965 General Assembly that it be discharged. Stanford Reid always felt that committees of the church tended to develop a life of their own and, besides, he was moving to Guelph. The committee continued, however, with Principal J. Stanley Glen of Knox College as the new convener. What started out as a ginger group to provide an independent critique of the church’s theological education became, according to critics, a group of insiders invested

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in the status quo and not about to do anything radical in reshaping theological education. At that point, Stanford Reid lost interest in what he perceived as the amazing capacity of organizations to protect their own interests and reinvent themselves. His frustrations as chairman of the Special Committee would contribute to his later interest in establishing a new and independent Reformed theological seminary in Canada. “Presbyterian Men” – a new movement begun in 1955 – was, in Stanford Reid’s estimation, one of the most encouraging things that had happened in the denomination. He was enthusiastic about its success in mobilizing laity. By 1962 seven or eight hundred had taken instruction on how to share their faith and another thousand or fifteen hundred were registered. As he noted, “A leaven consisting of more than 2,000 such enthusiasts can leaven a very big lump of churchgoers. These fellows will be the spark-plugs firing the dynamo of the Presbyterian Church.”36 Reid was a popular speaker at several “P.M.” conferences and participated in various local rallies. His blunt and outspoken style always appealed to a lay audience. When the Presbyterian Church in Jamaica requested someone from Canada to spread the word about the movement in the West Indies, Reid was sent. As he said to a reporter from the Kingston, Jamaica, paper sent to interview him on arrival: “I’m down here to case the joint and see what’s needed.” The journalist found the statement from a Presbyterian minister and a professor of history “startling.” “But from the human dynamo who is Dr W. Stanford Reid, one becomes accustomed to such forthright statements.” Reid spoke to fifty men at the Scots Kirk in Kingston, went on to Montego Bay, and concluded his itinerary on behalf of Presbyterian Men with a rally on the Cayman Islands. When Reformation Today folded in 1954, Stanford Reid lost his bully pulpit. By 1960 he was missing a platform where his strong opinions could be expressed. Marcellus Kik had edited Bible Christianity in the 1930s and 1940s. Reformation Today had lasted only three years. Now he planned a new broadsheet, more modest in format than the other two, which he called Presbyterian Comment. The Comment was a single 11” by 17” folded sheet with four pages and eight panels and was sent out to a limited mailing list at a cost of two cents. It was outspoken and feisty. Ostensibly an independent journal was necessary because the Presbyterian Record refused to publish some of Stanford Reid’s more opinionated articles. This unwillingness lasted throughout the time DeCourcy Rayner was editor of the official magazine.37 By nature conservative, anxious about anything that smacked of divisiveness, Rayner was the epitome of journalistic caution. To him the

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magazine must be the voice of those in denominational leadership. As a result, during his twenty years at the helm (1958–77), the magazine became a house organ – predictable, noncontroversial, and dull. All that would change dramatically when James Ross Dickey became editor in January 1978. Certainly Presbyterian Comment did not avoid controversy. To some it was a voice of welcome criticism of the status quo. To others the magazine destroyed much of the good will they had felt toward Stanford Reid following the 1960 General Assembly. They cringed over what they saw as his intemperate outbursts and destructive negativism. Others who wrote in the offprint were derided as “Reid’s cronies.” Nevertheless, independent Presbyterian journals had a long and illustrious history. The Comment could join Peter Brown’s 1844 Mirror and the turn-of-the-century Westminster and its successor The Presbyterian in historic continuity.38 Volume 1, number 1 of Presbyterian Comment appeared in January 1960. In an “Introductory Comment” Reid stated that the magazine “is being published by a group of ministers and laymen within the bounds of the Presbytery of Montreal.” But he went on to say that “it enjoys the support of other Presbyterians throughout our land.” The paper would be “entirely unofficial” and “the editorial policy will be to comment on matters of present importance to Presbyterians, whether they be matters within or without the Church...in accord with our Church’s doctrinal standards.” He concluded, “By this means we hope that we shall be able to help and strengthen the Presbyterian Church for its great task in our rapidly growing country.”39 The articles in the first issue were eclectic: on the front page C. Ritchie Bell had written a strongly worded “Did I Make a Mistake in 1925?” Reid contributed an article on the reorganization negotiations. In meticulous detail, he explained the Special Committee’s proposal and then zeroed in on the most contentious item, the church council. Rhetorically he asked: “Would not this be a dictatorial oligarchy which could control the church much as it pleased, without reference to anyone?” He then emphasized that there would be a system of checks and balances between the six branches of the church, as proposed, who “would keep an eye on each other ... The Council would have the authority to deal with any department which overstepped the bounds of its proper sphere.” And, above all, “the General Assembly would still retain ultimate authority [which] seems to provide adequate safeguards.” Unlike its predecessors, Presbyterian Comment would continue for two decades. Originally a Montreal-based operation, it owed much to the administrative support of D.K. Gowans, Reid’s close friend from

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Allan L. Farris (courtesy pcca)

Westmount High School days. When Gowans died suddenly in the summer of 1966, a year after Reid moved to Guelph, Presbyterian Comment passed into the hands of a younger group in southern Ontario. Major issues for the Comment during the first five years would be Professor David Hay’s proposed new Book of Common Order and the missions policies of Reid’s nemesis Ted Johnson. Among wider matters affecting Canadian Christians in the 1960s, there were articles on the new Sunday school curriculum of the United Church of Canada, the iconoclastic Honest to God by Bishop John Robinson, and Pierre Berton’s The Comfortable Pew. Reid had already expressed his concerns about the sacramental innovations of David Hay40 in 1955, when he discovered that the Knox College professor had in mind, as chairman of the Committee on Revision of the Book of Common Order, a reshaping of the church’s liturgies. In December 1955 he had written a joint letter to Hay and Allan Farris, chairman of the Committee on Church

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Worship, responding to their request at the General Assembly that year for feedback about the four orders for morning worship that had been submitted to the church41 His view is summarized in the final paragraph of the letter: “I wish to express my dislike of the attitude manifest in the literature sent out by your committees. It seems to me that the great emphasis on tradition and symbolism as the important sources of our form of worship is only bringing us under bondage to another ceremonial law. After all, the basic principle of Scriptural worship is not whether we worship at Samaria or Jerusalem, but that we worship in Spirit and in Truth. When we do this, the actual details of liturgical practice are really secondary.” Stanford made two criticisms of Hay’s material. First, he addressed Hay’s insistence that Calvin supported weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, a practice much favoured by this son of South African Salvation Army officers. (The Salvation Army do not observe any sacraments.) Calvin had indeed desired weekly communion, but Reid accused Hay of ignoring two other points. The first of these was the need for discipline in the administration of communion. “You have said absolutely nothing,” Reid complained to Hay, “about examination of communicants nor of the insistence upon adequate spiritual preparation.” Canadian Presbyterian churches were increasing the number of communion services “without preparatory services or the distribution of tokens. It was against such a casual attitude to the Lord’s Supper that both Calvin and the Scottish Church set their faces, but which we apparently are reviving in the names of those who abhorred it. This seems to be hardly good history!” The second point Reid went on to address was Hay’s great liturgical centrepiece, “The Service of Word and Sacrament.” “I am not advocating the disorganized and disorderly types of service common in certain quarters ... What I do object to is that you have sent out four ‘orders’ along with certain comments which indicate very clearly that you consider only numbers one and two to be the proper type of worship and that you hold that the Lord’s Supper must needs be present for ‘a full act of worship.’ To this position I cannot for an instant subscribe, nor could Calvin, as I believe I have shown above, nor does the Westminster Confession of Faith.” Stanford Reid saw something much more malign that either of these two objections, however. He perceived that what David Hay was doing was softening up the church for a new union. In an article “Whither the Presbyterian Church in Canada?” in a 1962 symposium he edited under the title In the Unity of the Faith he spoke of “those who would turn our type of worship service into a liturgical act similar to those of the Church of England or the Eastern Orthodox churches.”42 “A good

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many Presbyterians feel that we fought the church union battle in 1925 and now need have no more fear. The fact is, however, that we face an infinitely greater threat today. The type of organic union advocated by the Ecumenical Movement would destroy our Reformed witness, and if we date to refuse to enter such a union, might well seek to curb our freedom of witness.”43 The new Book of Common Order followed a tortuous course and was finally adopted by the 1964 General Assembly of a church tired of all the years of wrangling. Only six voted against its adoption “after a brief but tense consideration,” as one commissioner described it. Donald Campbell44 went on to say in Presbyterian Comment: “the Committee has chosen for its authority ... not Scripture, but ‘authentic tradition.’”45 The new book was “the production of a group of men who are trying to replace Reformed theology and liturgy with an ecumenical theology and ‘the liturgy,’ as it is reverently called.” Campbell asked the rhetorical question: “What is the doctrinal position of the church? What do the ordination vows mean which bind office bearers to the [1643 Westminster] Confession and the Directory [of Public Worship]?” He was expressing Reid’s concerns: the adoption of a liturgical aid contrary, as they perceived it, to the church’s subordinate standards could only weaken its confessional commitments and hasten its ecumenical capitulation. Ironically, David Hay’s Book of Common Order, designed (as it claimed) “to provide models of services that are truly services of the Church universal but are also alive to our contemporary scene” in language and in its reflection of Christendom is now, in our secular postChristendom Canada, peculiarly outdated and irrelevant. Gone are the quarterly (or even annual) communion services of yore – perhaps David Hay deserves credit here. But also gone in most Presbyterian churches in Canada are the old preparatory services and arguably much church discipline in the administration of the sacrament. Reid was correct in his assessment of that trend. Hay’s Book of Common Order, approved just at the tail end of the postwar church boom, was regarded by Stanford Reid as just another nail in the coffin of a denomination that was selling its distinctive confessional identity for a mess of ecumenical pottage. The second issue to which Presbyterian Comment addressed much of its attention was mission policy. Tweaking the nose of denominational secretaries, particularly Ted Johnson, was a feature of Reid’s independent journalism. It was only when what he described as Johnson’s “political machinations” were fully disclosed that the church could see the full extent of the damage that Johnson was inflicting on their missionary effort. Stanford Reid soon became the repository of

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confidential information that portrayed Ted Johnson in a very negative light. Ted Johnson’s visits to the mission field could create havoc. The power he wielded was so absolute that Reid seemed to be a court of appeal by missionaries who felt they had been unjustly treated. To cite one example of many: on 23 April 1959, on a visit to Taiwan, Johnson attended a closed meeting of the Personnel Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan with his cousin Bruce Copeland (of the United Church of Canada, an appointment that Reid vociferously opposed) and Hugh MacMillan (who had stayed in the Presbyterian Church though he voted for Church Union). Both Copeland and MacMillan were well-known liberals. In Johnson’s presence the committee approved a recommendation that veteran missionary Alexander MacLeod not be asked back to Taiwan following his forthcoming furlough. MacLeod was a well-known evangelical whose commentaries in Chinese were forthrightly conservative. Coming from mainland China (where he had been born), and since the only Chinese he spoke was Mandarin and not the Taiwan dialect, he was an easy target for Johnson. Furthermore, he was on loan to the Canadian mission from the liberal Presbyterian Church (usa), which, Johnson felt, would not support him. The whole procedure appeared to be a miscarriage of justice. As MacLeod complained to Reid in a confidential letter: Nothing was said to the MacLeods, either before the committee met, or subsequently. They were not spoken to about it; given any chance to appear before the committee; and nothing was said to the Rev. James Dickson, principal of Taiwan Theological College where the MacLeods teach. The action does not appear on the mimeographed English minutes of the 23 April meeting of the Personnel Committee. There have been a number of surmises on the part of various friends in Formosa, since the reason given officially is that the MacLeods are ‘not interested’ in the Church in Formosa, is so patently untrue. All of the surmises have this in common that it is a case of ‘liberal’ intolerance of ‘conservatives.’

This case, with its appearance of unfairness and the presence of Johnson at the crucial meeting, was one of the incidents that provoked Reid into calling Johnson ‘devious’ and ‘political’ and as having the aim of achieving control and power and furthering his liberal and ecumenical agenda. Once the action of the Personnel Committee became known, the reaction was quick in coming. Canadian Presbyterian missionaries, meeting in Tamsui, Taiwan, on 25 June, responded in anger. Johnson

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was seen as the instigator of the action. Nine months later, in a letter from James Dickson, principal of the Taiwan Theological College, MacLeod was informed that the general secretary of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, Mr Huang, had “stated that the Personnel Committee had requested your return.”46 The case was seen as yet another example of the way in which Ted Johnson and his friends manipulated the overseas denominational leadership. Reid was one of the few ready to challenge him. MacLeod continued to be a funnel for insider information to Reid, as a kind of missionary mole.47 In February of 1964, based on information he sent Reid,48 an editorial appeared in Presbyterian Comment entitled “Threat to Presbyterianism in Formosa?” Reid wrote: “Recently word has reached us of a new development in the Formosan Presbyterian Church which gives cause for very great concern.” A new Sunday school curriculum had been introduced. The creation of the Southeast Asia Chinese Sunday School Curriculum Editorial Board, according to Reid, “displays all the approaches of so-called modern theological liberalism.” The article got an immediate response from the chairman of the General Board of Missions. Dilwyn Evans was usually affable and lowkey.49 His annoyance was thinly veiled: Apparently among the many and varied activities in which you are involved, one is being editor of Presbyterian Comment ... it appears that you were asking some very good questions about the Christian Education curriculum at present under study in the Presbyterian Church in Formosa ... I am writing this letter...on behalf of the Board and of our executives to assure you that you are at absolute liberty to discuss with them or with any of us, these questions that arise not only in your mind but in the minds of all members of our church regarding our overseas work, and our home missions work, may I suggest that on the number of times that you are in Toronto for meetings, that you could perhaps use the lunch hour or the time convenient for you to seek out the answers to the questions which you must have ... this is a letter to invite you to do this and thus have your questions answered directly and quite factually.

To this Reid replied: In past years I have found it very difficult to get any information out of the Board of Missions ... I feel that very often matters of this type are dealt with by a small group at the top of the Board of Missions and the church has no knowledge of what is going on, although it is expected to pay to support such movements ... One of the reasons why we have such relative indifference to the mission work of our church overseas is that our people are told very little

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except what is pleasant. I also feel that quite a number of the policies with regard to such things as the Sunday School lessons and also the whole church union movement in India should be laid open before our church for debate in the General Assembly. I know the usual answer [is] we must let the indigenous churches decide for themselves.

Evans’ tolerance eventually reached its limit, and in March 1965 he lost his temper with Reid at a meeting they were both attending. He wrote later to apologize, hoping for a reciprocating expression of regret, but Stanford was unrepentant. “Ted Johnson does not wish to conform to the present financial policy of the church ... Basil Howell ... is simply trying to do a businesslike job of carrying out the orders of the church ... basically he has done an excellent job for us ...Ted had written out to the fields abroad and has accused him of mixing things up and of bringing confusion and disorder into the finances of the church ... Basil feels ... he cannot possibly stay but ... if he should leave and no strict controls are kept, Ted will soon have us back in the same situation we were in during 1958 ... auditors were told they could look into accounts of mission fields abroad ... when they asked ... this was refused.” 50 Stanford appealed to Evans as the chairman to ensure that Johnson would cooperate. Ted Johnson would go on to involve himself in the Nigerian civil war on the side of the short-lived Ibo secessionist state of Biafra and become moderator of the 1969 General Assembly. It was only in 1972 that his eighteen-year tenure as overseas board secretary came to an end with the reorganization of the Mission Board. Ted Johnson is now perceived as a kind of bellwether individual in the dramatic shift that took place in mainline denominational foreign missions between 1955 and 1975. From ecumenical engagement in the 1950s that minimized confessional differences, he went on to a secularized political activism that eschewed all mention of religion during the Biafran secession of 1967 to 1970. Johnson’s campaign to involve the Canadian government in the civil war in Nigeria, as has been convincingly shown in a recent paper, “changed the Canadian church in the second half of the twentieth century.”51 Johnson had little background in the complexities of Africa when he intervened in Biafra. Presbyterians, the only Canadian denominational mission in Nigeria, were recent arrivals, having entered the country (in a comity agreement with the Church of Scotland) in 1954. “One episode in modern times stands out as a formative experience in contemporary humanitarianism: Biafra,” the well-known human rights activist and Africawatch director Alex deWaal stated recently. “Biafra is totemic for contemporary relief ... But Biafra is also a taboo:

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the ethical issues that it raises have still to be faced.”52 In 1968 Dorothy Roberts, a Canadian Presbyterian missionary in Nigeria at the time, echoed Dickson’s condemnation of Ted Johnson eight years earlier: “the word mission, missionary, church, or anything that smells of it is definitely in bad taste to the point where we do absolutely nothing unless it is through the Nigerian Red Cross.”53 The Johnson years in the missionary operation of the Canadian Presbyterian church spelled the end of almost a century of unapologetic Christian outreach overseas, and reduced both missionary numbers and program to a shadow of what they had once been. All this Reid saw, deplored, and had the courage to speak out against. He risked his reputation in a critique of the policies of a man who was to many then, as he is today, an icon. But, as an historian, Reid could see clearly where these policies were leading the church. The conflict between Stanford Reid and Ted Johnson was symptomatic of major differences within the Presbyterian Church in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s. Ironically the two men had much in common: both had been brought up in Westmount, both had gone outside the country for theological training, both were among the ablest ministers in the denomination, each had an international reputation. But at that point they parted company. Johnson was committed to ecumenical and political activism. Reid was committed to confessional loyalty. In personality the two were mirror opposites: Johnson the consummate, some said smooth, politician, Reid the craggy and aggressive debater. In Reid’s pugnacity there was consistency: you were never in doubt as to where he stood. You might not agree, but even his enemies could not gainsay the fact that he tenaciously held to principle. His outspokenness was admired by some and denounced by others. In the years 1951–1965, the prime years of the post-Union Presbyterian Church in Canada, Stanford Reid was an articulate spokesperson for a position rooted in Reformed confessions and principles of evangelical faith that sought to protect and ensure the church’s future.

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10 McGill’s Unsettling Putsch, 1958–1965 The Loss of a Patron

The eighth congress of the Universities of the Commonwealth was a showcase opportunity for McGill and for its principal. Originally founded as the Universities Bureau of the British Empire, the organization had come a long way from its initial gathering in 1912, when it was described as the First Congress of the Universities of the Empire. Following the Second World War, the organization had to recognize new realities, and thus became the Association of Universities of the British Commonwealth. Meetings had been held in rotation between Oxford and Cambridge, but in 1950 Cyril James had lobbied strongly for holding the eighth congress, in 1958, in Montreal. He maintained that “the enhancement of Canada’s commonwealth role would justify the costs.”1 As host, James was front and centre for all the activities, which concluded with a grand train trip for the dignitaries to James’ (and Reid’s) alma mater in Philadelphia and a visit with President Eisenhower at the White House. “He felt,” James’ biographer notes, “that if anything went wrong, it would reflect upon him personally, but if everything went well, McGill must compare at least equitably with Toronto.”2 Reid had a prominent role in the eighth congress. As dean of university residences, he was host for many of the 500 delegates who were housed in Douglas Hall. As university marshal he coordinated the impressive convocation on 1 September 1958 that began the proceedings. Six leading academics from five continents were presented by James to receive honorary McGill doctorates of law. Priscilla, as part of a committee for “evening activities,” joined a group of faculty

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wives to provide alternative entertainment for those not attending the sessions.3 For Stanford Reid the opportunities to network were irresistible. From contacts he made at the conference came a job offer in the West Indies and invitations for the summer of 1960 to Oxford, St Andrew’s,and Aberdeen universities. Hugh Trevor-Roper4 asked Reid to lecture at Oxford, and the other two schools invited him to their graduations. Ritchie Bell on behalf of the Presbytery of Montreal sent congratulations: “We understand that your plans for the coming summer include a series of lectures on Scottish History at Oxford University, and the Presbytery is justifiably proud to know that you will be the first Canadian historian [sic] to be heard at Oxford, and they have asked me to convey to you their congratulations and their very best wishes, and to assure you that they are proud of the leadership that you continue to give within the life of the Church and the University.”5 Along with twelve other Canadians, Stanford Reid received a Nuffield Foundation grant to finance his trip overseas. To qualify, he was committed “to work for four months on local family records and papers throughout England.”6 The Reids left Montreal on 30 April 1959. At Oxford he delivered four lectures on “The Social Background of the Scottish Reformation.” The Reids then journeyed north, first to Dundee, where the Evening Telegraph recorded that “an interesting visitor to Dundee, Professor W.S. Reid, of McGill University, Montreal, finds the city equally interesting.” While exploring Dundee’s relationship with the Reformation in the city archives, the Reids were the guests of D.R. Dow, former master of Queen’s College, Dundee. They went on to university convocations at St Andrew’s and Aberdeen. Between the two events Reid sandwiched in a visit to Doune Lodge to see his cousin Douglas Stuart, later the Earl of Moray.7 He also visited Inverary and spent time with the Duke of Argyll, going through ancient documents. As the duke noted, “The problem from any investigator’s point of view is that there is no detailed inventory of loose bills or memorials, and the big looseleaf books have to be ‘treated’ one by one.”8 The present Earl of Moray, Douglas Stuart, remembers visits to Darnaway Castle in Forres, Moray. “Stanford and Priscilla always spent a few days with my parents when in Scotland and it was largely through him that my younger brothers went to McGill on leaving the army in the mid 1950s. When here he was always keen to look at our family archives as he was always researching some new project and looking for material for his various books. We were impressed with the ability he had of being able to read the exceedingly difficult sixteenth or seventeenth century Scots writing where the legibility was made even

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more obscure by the use of the vernacular! Stanford’s visits were always something to remember as he was such an enthusiast.”9 Reid’s reputation, particularly in the United Kingdom, was growing. The following summer he received a special honour. Along with Vincent Massey, former governor general of Canada, and four other distinguished Canadians,10 he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, founded in 1774.11 Late in 1959 the Reids acquired a junk. Having a junk, particularly in Canadian east coast waters, was a novelty. There were quite a few on the Pacific coast but, as the newspapers stated breathlessly, the Pelee was the “the only one known anywhere in these parts.” Owning the Pelee enhanced the Reid legend exponentially. The boat was described as “a strange and romantic-looking vessel [with] high stern, square bowed, with long dipping line fore to aft.”12 It had been made in Hong Kong and was shipped to New York, where it languished in bad shape in a warehouse without a buyer until Stanford acquired it for half price.13 Somewhere in the Adirondack mountains, during the overland journey, an accident put a hole in the hull, and the junk had to be placed in dry dock at Ile Perrot for repairs. Stanford put two twenty-five-horsepower outboard motors in wells at the stern, which pushed it along at twelve knots. He also replaced the Chinese cotton sails with terylene red sails, and with a mahogany hull and yellow cabin “it was quite a sight.” The cabin and galley took the place of the traditional fish tank in the centre. Even after these repairs, when first in the water, it sank two or three feet. Finally, after being pumped out and caulked by Stanford and Priscilla, the boat was judged seaworthy. In honour of Priscilla, it was christened the Pelee. It was berthed in the Hudson Yacht Club outside Montreal, and was in dry dock six months of every year. But Stanford’s verdict was that the Pelee was “marvellous to sail.”14 The Pelee was a masterpiece of design and space planning. Storage racks, folding shelves, lockers under bunks, cutouts for glasses and bottles, even a built-in incense burner graced the boat. A beautiful mahogany table that came with the vessel was deemed by Priscilla to be “far too nice for a boat” and taken to the family home up river in Calumet. Stanford was particularly proud of the ironwood rudder shaft and explained knowledgeably to a newspaper reporter that the rudder was “fenestrated” to make for ease of turning. The cub reporter took it all down but had to look up the word “fenestrated” in a dictionary to discover that it meant simply “pierced with holes.” Wherever the Reids sailed, the Pelee was a star attraction. In the summer of 1961, they sailed up the St Lawrence River. There was an

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anxious first night when they ran into foul weather and ended up on the rocks as they approached what the charts had indicated was safe water. The design of the vessel, however, enabled them to slide up on shore, clean the bottom, and paint it because the sturdy mahogany planking was not damaged. They weighed anchor in Prescott, midway on the St Lawrence Seaway between Montreal and Kingston. The local newspaper reported that “Prescott’s Port has seen many craft, but on Thursday last a ship definitely out of the ordinary (as far as this part of the world is concerned) tied up at the dld dock.”15 The local Presbyterian minister, whom they visited while docked, had never received visitors arriving in such an unconventional manner. Further upstream, a Brockville journalist quoted Priscilla as describing their trip as “the finest and most enjoyable holiday one could have.” While there, they were received by the mayor and given dinner by a local judge. On the journey home, the Cornwall Standard-Freeholder sent a photographer, who captioned his picture: “Junk is authentic, being brought from Hong Kong in 1958. Professor and wife were sleeping when this photo was taken.”16 The Reids returned to Montreal on 4 August. The Montreal Star provided a generous photographic spread and trumpeted “Professor at Helm of Junk.” The professor was quoted: “I can get 10 knots on these engines. And with finer-pitch screws I can make it 12.” Priscilla added that on their recent jaunt up the Seaway “we passed a ship with a Chinese crew on board and they were very excited when they saw us. They couldn’t seem to believe it.”17 The trip up the St Lawrence Seaway was the high point of the Reids’ adventures with the Pelee. The novelty must have worn off, and their life became too full of distractions, for there is not much mention of the boat after their grand voyage in 1961. It was sold to a Montreal lawyer when the Reids moved from Montreal to landlocked Guelph in 1965.18 It was now Priscilla’s turn to make headlines. As president of the Historical Association of Montreal she convened a meeting of fourteen English and French historical societies within a sixty-mile radius of the city. Joining forces, they discussed how to preserve the core of la vieille ville. Throughout North America, cities were being torn apart by super highways and skyscrapers. Montreal, in spite of being one of the oldest urban centres on the continent, was also in danger of losing its heritage. The meeting created “The Historical Council of Greater Montreal,” whose purpose, as Priscilla was quoted as saying, would be to “seek and maintain historical monuments and create an historical consciousness” in the mind of the public. She hoped to encourage

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the community “to preserve the old along with the new.”19 Stanford, as honorary president of the Historical Association of Montreal, chaired the meeting. Three days later, on 10 June 1961, the Montreal Gazette featured a full-length article headlined “Preserving Our Heritage.” There was a picture of Priscilla and she was quoted extensively. “Great concern was expressed over the loss of so many old and historic landmarks in recent days, due to the tremendous expansion in business and industry, as well as to the increase in population, necessitating great new housing developments.” The council would embrace both anglophone and francophone representatives and “provide a means for pooling of resources ... foster closer relationships ... an exchange of ideas of information ... [and] assist individual groups to implement projects.” 20 The first project was the restoration of Bonsecours Market, modelling what had been done to Le Vieux Carré in New Orleans. The buildings in that area were historically important: the 1705 Chateau de Ramezay, the Nelson Monument, Rosco’s and Nelson’s Hotels, and the church of Notre Dame de Bonsecours. “Seldom does one find such a concentration of interesting historical buildings, monuments, and tablets within so small a space,” Priscilla explained. “The feeling of those present was that the time is ripe to take action. Not only historians, but the general public is becoming increasingly conscious of Canada’s great heritage. This may be part of the growing nationalism which is manifesting itself. Still, if it persists, it will enable Montreal and the area around it to preserve for the future, not only large and imposing structures, but also many less conspicuous though valuable remains which could easily be destroyed.”21 For the next six months plans proceeded, and in October 1961 Priscilla Reid was installed as first president of “the newly formed Historical Council of the Montreal region” at a gathering in the Chateau de Ramezay. With Judge Roche and brewer John Molson as first and second vice presidents, and thirty-two members present representing sixteen local historical groups, it was an impressive lineup. They attracted much publicity and staged many fund-raisers. A few months later, a kilted Stanford Reid, along with two fellow Scots, was pictured at the piano singing Scottish ballads before a Burns Night Dinner at the Chateau de Ramezay. One of the men explained the choice of instrument: “A Scotsman in a kilt should never be seen playing a guitar – it’s not really done.”22 In 1961 the preservation and restoration of historical buildings was a relatively new concept. Priscilla Reid, using her social contacts, set about to mobilize the city of Montreal to preserve its heritage. She accepted speaking engagements and provided talks on subjects such as

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“Winter Season in Old Montreal” and “Life in Montreal 100 Years Ago” to community organizations. On 16 August 1962 Montreal city council created a commission. Named after Montreal’s first mayor (1833–36), the antiquarian and archaeologist Jacques Viger, its mandate was to study all questions relating to the historic preservation of old Montreal, defined as bounded on the east by Berri, the south by Commissioners and Commune, to the west by McGill Street, and to the north by Nôtre Dame. The Commission could also advise about other historic areas of the city on request. On 26 September 1962 the Council of the City of Montreal named the members of the Jacques-Viger Commission. Priscilla was the only woman appointed (later to be joined by Mme Claude Bertrand). Paul Gouin, president of the Monuments and Historical Sites Commission, was chairman. Among other appointees were Lucien Bergeron, director of the Tourism Office; Paul Gauthier, chief archivist for Montreal; Jean-Louis Levesque, a leading businessman; David Stewart, director of the Montreal Military Museum; and the journalist Eric McLean. The Commission, whose early meetings were conducted in English, began deliberations on 10 October 1962. It would continue until 1990 and make a significant contribution to preserving old Montreal for posterity. Being named to the Jacques-Viger Commission was recognition of the importance of Priscilla Reid’s contribution to Montreal. In the summer of 1963, a Montreal Star editorial registered alarm about a statement in the Quebec legislature that existing laws governing the preservation of historical buildings were weak. The Star expressed its ringing endorsement of Priscilla Lee Reid: she was quoted as saying that “the battle to revive, plan and preserve the area bounded by McGill, Berri, Craig and the waterfront requires active interest on the part of Montreal’s citizens, and new legislation with teeth in it to prevent the demolition of historical valuable areas.” At the 4 November 1964 meeting – its thirty-sixth – her resignation from the Jacques-Viger Commission was accepted with regret “because of ill-health.”23 The old city of Montreal is today a magnet for historians, preservationists, and tourists as a result of the pioneering work of individuals such as Priscilla Reid, who was always actively encouraged by her husband. In the early sixties, partly as a result of the nationalism stirred by the Quiet Revolution, Montreal was beginning to experience pride in its rich historic, cultural, and architectural heritage. It was a new era. Gone were the wrecking balls and demolition crews of the 1950s. Had the destruction been allowed to continue the urban landscape of Montreal would have been irretrievably altered as the skyline was taken over by ever larger blocks of concrete and steel.

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That le patrimoine was safeguarded – and indeed, in Quebec, even venerated – was due (particularly in Montreal) in no small measure to the efforts of anglophone Priscilla Lee Reid, a native Quebecker for three generations. As the Reids were leaving for Ontario in 1965, Priscilla received an official letter from the City of Montreal conveying “best and sincere thanks to you Madam, for all the good work you have done in the various cultural societies of our metropolis, especially in the fascinating historic field.”24 The full story of her achievements in preserving Montreal’s past is still to be told. In January 1962 Stanford Reid returned from a trip to Jamaica on behalf of Presbyterian Men to a McGill that was to undergo dramatic change. Principal Cyril James was about to be unceremoniously dumped. On 27 January 1961, while passing through Paris after meetings in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, James had a heart attack. Throughout the next year, as his health was threatened and he faced increasing conflicts with the provincial government and the faculty, James considered his options for the future. Eventually Chancellor Ray Edwin Powell made the decision for him. Powell, who was seventy-four at the time, felt that McGill University should be operated the same way he had run the Aluminum Company of Canada. Reid had experienced firsthand the manner by which Powell tried to override administrators; he would later recall “a row I had with Powell over his interference with Douglas Hall.”25 Powell charged that James was underperforming. He was not giving McGill his full attention because he had too many outside distractions, and now his health was unsure. Powell set about to have him removed as he would any underperforming employee. Loyalty after twenty-two and a half years as a popular and respected principal who had international name recognition meant nothing. To Powell, the fact that James had immeasurably strengthened McGill counted for little. Nor did there appear to be any indication of appreciation for James’ leadership. In a putsch arranged by Powell, the governors voted at a 16 April 1962 meeting to endorse acceptance of James’ forced resignation. Reid had lost his patron and McGill for him would never be the same again. It was a shattering blow for James and in his despair he turned to religion. During the summer following his resignation, as he prepared to leave Montreal for retirement in England, he would get up each morning and read “a little of the Bible” and “pray that God will show me his will, and give me the strength and the humility to obey it.”26 Reid tried to minister to him as James sought to reignite the spiritual-

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ity of his youth. At convocation, on James McGill’s birthday, Edward Andrew Collard, editor of the Gazette, sounded a brave note: “One of the grandest chapters in McGill’s creative history of faith in tomorrow is the history of the last twenty-three years.”27 It was an emotional occasion for Reid, presiding over the ceremony as university marshal. He and Priscilla would continue their friendship with Irene and Cyril James and visit them in their retirement in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, when in England. James died eleven years later. Childless and with a difficult marriage, his final years were not easy. He recalled his association with Reid with affection right to the end. The spring convocation at McGill celebrated one of James’ achievements: the erection of three new men’s residences at McGill. There was unintended irony as Prince Philip addressed the crowd and paid tribute to “the man who raised the five million dollars involved” and who “deserved more credit than the architect.” Behind Prince Philip was Ray Edwin Powell, with Cyril James sandwiched between him and Stanford Reid. Reid would now have not two residences but five to manage. It was, to use the description of one person present, “a frantic exciting time.” The students decided that they should have a celebration as well, and following a beer bash, there was a near riot. Both in architecture and ambiance the new residences were a radical departure from previous university residences. Assistant Warden Alisdair Stewart remembered the final year of the ancien régime: In Douglas Hall we had a matron, Mrs Mary Walter, an English widow who had been a house matron at a private girls school. There were kitchen staff including a formidable francophone, Auriole Horiange. I was the live-in Assistant Warden. We dined together with the students at a ‘high table.’ We all found Stanford (Dr Reid at the time) a benevolent dictator – a large man with a large presence, and strong personality. If angered, his heavy tread could shake the floor and he could have a stentorian voice. Matron and I would raise eyebrows to each other with a warning look to keep our heads down – ‘Stannie boy is on the warpath!’ It did not happen often but could be impressive. Priscilla was always quiet, courteous, charming and a perfect foil.28

That club-like atmosphere ended in May 1962 for McGill residences and with it the civilized gentility of academic life represented by 1930s Douglas Hall. The new residences were clustered together on property north of Douglas Hall known as Macdonald Park. Each new dorm had eight floors and was built with cement block and reinforced concrete, typical of 1960s Canadian university architecture. They brought in an additional thousand students, whose housing Reid would administer. His title was subtly changed. James, on behalf of

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the board of governors, announced that Reid would now be director, not warden. Each of the new halls would have a warden of its own who reported to Reid. His administrative role had increased. Skipper From Leith, Stanford’s first book in almost a decade, appeared that summer. Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, in some ways it is one of the more successful of his titles. The skipper from Leith was Robert Barton of Over Barnton, Scottish sailor, pilot, entrepreneur, and shrewd politician. The book was written, Reid explained, to “throw some light upon the sixteenth-century middle class and upon pre-Reformation history in Scotland.”29 The given wisdom, after R.H. Tawney, was that the Protestant work ethic was responsible for modern industrial capitalism. By looking at a preReformation capitalist, however, one could determine whether the post-Reformation pattern represented a continuity or a marked divergence. Hence the book was intended to contradict Tawney. Reid set out to demonstrate, by tracing the career of Robert Barton, that capitalism had pre-Reformation roots. Barton had begun as a merchant adventurer in Leith, the port city of Edinburgh, during the early years of James IV of Scotland. He was able to rise rapidly through his help in establishing Scotland as a maritime power. James’ death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513 brought confusion. During the minority of his son, James V, Barton became controller from 1516 to 1525. He returned to the same position for a year in 1529 and during that time he was also treasurer. The king owed him a large sum of money, and during the final decade of his life Barton was continually sued by creditors. Barton’s career illustrated that “the merchant class gathered into its own hands new political power which it was not slow to use to its own political, economic, and religious advantage. That such was Barton’s position is quite clear, for by 1530 he seems to have been in control of most of the country’s financial administration.”30 Reid’s turgid writing style, with its convoluted syntax, was a drawback in all his published works. But Skipper From Leith showed his ability as a raconteur who could tell a story with appropriate drama. The reviewers, however, were not kind. Athol Murray’s review in the prestigious English Historical Review was dismissive: “The subject was a good one; it is unfortunate that it has not received more scholarly treatment.”31 Maurice Lee, Jr, of the University of Illinois, wrote in the Canadian Historical Review that “this is an informative book, but also a disappointing one ... Professor Reid has added to our knowledge but it cannot be said that he has greatly furthered our understanding of the period of which he writes.”32 Lee had already gone on record as dis-

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missing any historian who could attribute the Scottish Reformation to divine providence: “It is difficult to imagine anyone in the mid-twentieth century attributing historical events to the intervention of God, but so we are told in a book published in 1960, which, to save the author and his friends embarrassment, had better go nameless.”33 A supernaturalist, a Christian, and a Presbyterian minister, Reid was a sitting target for secular historians, particularly those with an anti-religion predisposition. Reid’s lack of attention to details also made him vulnerable. He had “difficulties with the technicalities of Scottish law.”34 Latin words, such as villa for village, had been mistranslated. There was too much speculation. In a single paragraph on page sixty-four a reviewer caught no fewer than eight words suggesting conjecture: “no doubt,” “seem,” “is not stated, but,” “undoubtedly,” “may have been.” Reid would have benefited from knowledgeable readers who could have vetted the material before publication. In the introduction he thanks various individuals but none of them experts, with the possible exception of two people in the General Register House in Edinburgh who assisted him in securing documents.35 Cyril James received appreciation for his “interest, encouragement, and advice,” as did Priscilla “his research assistant, his reviser, his proofreader and his house critic.” She “has worked unfailingly with him both in his research and in his writing.” As director of university residences, Stanford and Priscilla continued to play host to various international gatherings that chose Montreal and McGill University as their venue. In that capacity the Reids were increasingly called on to interpret and explain the complexities of the fast-changing Quebec society, then going through its Révolution tranquille or “Quiet Revolution.” The 22 June 1960 provincial election ended sixteen years of increasingly repressive rule by the Union Nationale government. The following two were a time of dramatic change in Quebec as the new premier, Jean Lesage, challenged every aspect of society. Political patronage, which had long exercised a stranglehold on the democratic process, was confronted. One institution that experienced the full weight of the Liberal juggernaut was the Quebec educational system. The Parent Commission overturned two centuries of collusion between church and state and established a whole new school system that significantly lessened the hold of the Quebec Roman Catholic establishment. And there was a new nationalism, ominously summed up in the motto “Je me souviens.” There was a great deal for francophone Quebeçois to remember. In the summer of 1962, Stanford, with Priscilla, was again involved as a host, this time for the Tenth International Congress of Radiology.

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Priscilla was called upon to help delegates and their families understand the province of Quebec. Some of what she said might seem today to be slightly patronizing, but at the time, it was regarded as inoffensive: “Montreal is a French city, and next to Paris, it is the largest French-speaking city in the world. But don’t expect the French Canadian to speak like Parisian French.” She warned the wives of congress delegates “with finishing school French” not to be alarmed if they could not understand their taxi driver.36 She described the French Canadian as “thrifty, hard-working, and adventurous. But he remains apart and retains his own identity.” Fortunately, La Presse was charitable: “Fervente admiratrice de sa ville natale don’t elle s’emploie à conserver les monuments dignes d’intérêt, Mme Reid résuma habilement et objectivement 300 ans d’histoire en une brève causerie illustrée de diapositives” (Fervent admirer of her native city which she serves by preserving worthy and interesting monuments, Mrs Reid summarized easily and objectively 300 years of history in a short talk illustrated by slides).37 McGill University that autumn was also a place of change and uncertainty following the chancellor’s April putsch. The governors’ choice of a new principal was announced on 19 November, and Powell told James to vacate his office by the end of the month. Years later Reid reminisced about James: “He was a man of very definite ideas and strong convictions that he was right. Yet I found that even if I objected strongly to his plans or point of view, he always gave me a fair hearing and sometimes, although not often, even conceded that I was correct. What is more, although he might reject my views, I never found that my objections made the slightest difference to our personal relationship. He did not seem to hold a grudge against one who argued with him. This cannot always be said of other academic administrators I have known.”38 One of the administrators to whom Reid refers was James’ successor. Harold Rocke Robertson, the eleventh principal of McGill University, was a distinguished surgeon. In 1950 he helped found the Medical Faculty of the University of British Columbia. His 1959 appointment as chief surgeon at the Montreal General Hospital and chairman of McGill’s surgery department advanced him to “one of the most powerful positions in Canadian medicine.”39 In three years, he had established a reputation as an innovator and a good administrator. Robertson had served overseas during the war with Stanford’s brother, Stewart, in the Royal Canadian Medical Corps. They both taught in the McGill Medical School, Robertson in surgery and Stewart Reid in cardiology. But it quickly became apparent that Stanford Reid’s relationship with Robertson would be vastly different from his brother’s.

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University Marshal Stanford Reid, with McGill’s Registrar Colin MacDougall, robed the new principal at a special convocation on 2 April 1963. Powell as chancellor intoned the words of investiture: “in order that you may hold this Title in peace and honour and integrity.” Those words, coming from Powell after his recent putsch, had a hollow ring. Robertson set about making changes at McGill. Stewart Reid recalls that, one day, Robertson phoned Stanford to say that his wife, Bee, would like to inspect Douglas Hall. Would Reid be available to show her around? Reid replied tartly that, yes, Priscilla would be more than happy to give her a guided tour.40 They could not even agree about their common Scots heritage. Reid contradicted Robertson one day in public: the Reids were not a sept of the clan Robertson, he stated emphatically. Their most serious clashes, however, came over the administration of the new university residences. As students returned to university in the autumn of 1962, there were complaints about the new dorms. “If a chap in the next room wants to roll over in bed, you can actually hear him move the pillow!”41 There were no common rooms, the dining hall layout was unsatisfactory, and there was no adequate television room. Reid announced, after a committee considered the deficiencies, that a series of sound tests would be conducted by an electrical engineering professor. Soundproofing would take place during the Christmas holidays. “We will go ahead just as fast as we possibly can,” Reid assured the Montreal Gazette.42 During the following year, 1962–63, Stanford fulfilled various academic assignments. In September he addressed the fall honours convocation of Gordon College and Divinity School in Beverley Farms, Massachusetts. In December, he was invited to be a guest at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, by the university and the Jamaican Christian Council. Under the heading “The Origins of Modern Thought,” he gave four lectures on “Christian and Classical Motifs in Mediaeval Thought,” “The Rediscovery of the Individual,” “The Reforming of Christian Thought,” and “The Dividing Stream of Western Thought.” In the summer of 1963 the Reids made a wide sweep through New England and the Maritimes. Stanford addressed the Gaelic Mod at St Ann’s, Cape Breton one Sunday and Boston’s historic Park Street Church the next. He was also a featured speaker at a Mount Allison University Summer Institute. At the institute he provided what was billed as “a Christian response” to Columbia University Professor Paul Goodman’s paper on “The Social Challenge to Christianity.” Goodman focused on the role of clergy in the accelerating civil rights movement. Reid dealt critically with the fundamentalist abandonment of social responsibility and its inherent racism. In between he and Priscilla

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visited a young ordinand in a rural area of Nova Scotia for whom they had felt some responsibility since his undergraduate days at Douglas Hall. On 1 November 1963, McGill announced that W. Stanford Reid, Perez Zagorin, and John Cooper had all been appointed full professors of history. Reid received further recognition when the university’s Research Committee (along with the British Council and the American Philosophical Society) announced they would fund research the following summer on “The Social Background of the Scottish Reformation.” He had secured for himself a comfortable niche at McGill, but this would soon change. Indeed, the mid–1960s were a time of ferment, especially in Quebec as the Quiet Revolution became noisier and more anglophones felt themselves alienated from their roots in the province. McGill was also affected by the new Quebeçois nationalism. Rocke Robertson was trying to accommodate the university’s altered status. And Stanford Reid, who as director of university residences was one of his key administrators, responsible for a large budgetary item, was feeling the chill from the principal’s office. As the last remaining colleague with Reid in the history department said: “Robertson wanted his own man and Reid wanted his own department.”43 The first possibility was not long in coming. Stanford’s name was proposed for the newly created position of president of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. The idea of having a president at Westminster Seminary had aroused considerable apprehension among its constituency. Their interpretation of the 1929 split that brought the seminary into existence was to blame the president of what they called “the old Princeton.” J. Ross Stevenson, they argued, had gained too much power and politicked until Machen and his friends had no honourable alternative but to leave. As a result of that experience, since 1929 the staff had administered the school by consensus at faculty meetings. The school had gone through a rapid expansion of its enrolment in the early 1960s, but now the student body was shrinking and money was in tight supply. Alumni were receiving strongly worded appeals for money as income failed to match expenses, and the old collegial decision-making was no longer working. Tighter administrative controls under a compelling president who could provide strong direction seemed the answer.44 What was apparent to many was confirmed when the Middle States Accrediting Association brought in their evaluation report in 1964. They gave the seminary until 1 April of the next year to clean up its act or risk being dropped. In this emergency, Stanford Reid was called on to provide leadership. Reid had joined the board of trustees of Westminster Seminary in

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1946, during an earlier crisis, giving the school much needed credibility and stability. At that time the seminary was at a low ebb. For three years conflict had raged between Professor Cornelius Van Til and philosopher Gordon Clark and his friends. Clark had earlier been dismissed from Wheaton College because of his Calvinism. He then sought ordination in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. This was eventually denied because his apologetics, particularly the way he formulated the law of non-contradiction, differed from Van Til.45 Former Westminster Seminary faculty member John Frame concedes that in this whole incident “Van Til seems to be at his worst”46 Five trustees, supporters of Gordon Clark, resigned and Stanford Reid was hurriedly recruited to fill the gap. He recommended J. Marcellus Kik, and there were three others who joined the board as loyalists to the school and supporters of Van Til.47 For thirty-eight years, Reid was a trustee of Westminster Seminary. At considerable inconvenience, and at his own expense, he attended the biannual board meetings and was happily involved in its easy camaraderie. Reid had more than fulfilled his commitment as a trustee. He was a regular contributor to the Westminster Theological Journal, providing a dozen essays and many more reviews over thirty-seven years.48 He gave both the 194849 and the 1955 commencement addresses, and allowed his name to be used for promotional purposes. A 1960 bulletin profiling distinguished graduates singled him out for “sound scholarship [which] has brought new respect for Biblical Christianity. He has produced many articles of broad interest for religious and secular journals throughout the world. His published volumes have had wide recognition and he now has two more books in preparation.”50 At the invitation of the president of the Student Association, he made a special trip to address the 1962 Westminster student Christmas banquet. The deadline imposed by the Middle States Association created new tensions. There were continuing doubts and much delving into the past. President Stevenson, it was argued, had split Princeton Seminary and altered its theological commitments. Would a president at Westminster do the same thing? Some even saw a parallel in the search for a king in the Old Testament and the difficulties it had created for Israel. As a respected trustee, with the most experience in academic administration, Stanford Reid was asked to chair a committee on administration. At the May 1964 meeting of the trustees, this committee recommended that there be a dean of the faculty “to be responsible for the general supervision of academic operations and, in consultation with the comptroller, for the coordination of departmental budgets.” It was apparent that appointing a dean was a half-measure and did not meet the demands of the evaluation report and its deadline. By October,

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Reid and his committee were recommending a whole new structure: an expanded trustee board, an executive committee of the board, and now a new office, a president “with adequate safeguards and limitations of power.” On 27 October 1964, after heated and prolonged debate, the board of trustees agreed to revamp the entire administrative structure of the seminary. Stanford Reid’s committee had changed the administration of the school. There would be a king in Israel, a president for Westminster Seminary. To follow the Old Testament analogy, “Samuel,” in the guise of trustee LeRoy Oliver, chairman of a committee to search for a president, would make the selection. Reid was the obvious choice for the position. At some point at the end of 1964 he was interviewed by the Westminster Presidential Search Committee.51 On 4 January 1965 chairman LeRoy Oliver shared with Reid that the committee had failed to reach unanimity in presenting his name to the board of trustees as their candidate for president. “In connection with our Committee to search for a president some of the members have raised the question concerning your membership in the Presbyterian Church in Canada and that denomination’s membership in the World Council of Churches and the possible effect of those relationships on Westminster’s public image were you to be chosen to be president.” He then referred to “Dr Machen’s militant stand against modernism in the past and the Seminary’s identification with that position.”52 Reid’s reply ten days later was straightforward. With regard to the ecumenical criticism he wrote: “Not too sure that it is of a very great importance. I have fought the World Council of Churches in our own church, although I must admit that I have not concentrated very much on this as there have been so many other things closer to home that I have had to battle with ... On the other hand, I do feel that my own known position both in our own church and elsewhere quite clearly indicates my opposition to modernism and all that it stands for.”53 He could see tremendous opportunities at the seminary. “As I look at the situation at Westminster, I feel that as the one institution that holds to the Reformed position clearly and distinctly on the North American Continent, it has a marvellous opportunity ahead of it. [I am] very anxious to see the best possible man at its head ... I am not, therefore, in any way anxious myself for the position, and hope that the committee can get the very best man whoever he may be to do the job as I feel that the one hope for sound Christianity in North America at the present time is Westminster.” Reid saw that the retirement of the original Westminster faculty posed a real danger to the school. The faculty from 1929 until the mid–1960s, with the exception of Oswald Allis and Allan MacRae, had held together remarkably well. R.B.

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Kuiper had retired in 1952 and Ned Stonehouse had died in 1962. Other faculty veterans such as John Murray, Paul Woolley, and Van Til were still active, but their retirements were approaching. Reid wrote the committee, withdrawing his name from further consideration. “I could not help but feel that the faculty seems to be set itself definitely to prevent any expansion or any widening of the horizons at the Seminary ... the faculty and I would certainly not see eye to eye on a good many peripheral matters which the faculty would elevate to principle.”54 It was, he stated reluctantly, “better to leave your hands free ... I would be ready to consider the matter again ... I must confess that Van Til’s statement that I was used to bigger things while the Seminary was a rather small operation came as a bit of a shock to me. It seems to me that this is a form of Protestant monasticism, or even worse defeatism, which might almost spell the doom of the Seminary. All of which shows that the older faculty was deficient in getting replacements.”55 By the 17 March 1965 board meeting, Reid’s new charter and constitution and by-laws for the seminary were approved, but he would not be the one to implement them. That responsibility would fall to Edmund P. Clowney,56 a faculty member, who became Westminster’s first president. On 26 January 1965 Stanford Reid wrote a fateful letter to Dean Murdo MacKinnon of the new University of Guelph, applying for appointment as chairman of the department of history at its Wellington College of Arts and Sciences. Reid, then fifty-two, and Priscilla, at fifty-seven, were about to join a growing Quebec anglophone diaspora. One chapter in their lives had ended. Four months later, as they headed west along Highway 401, they were starting all over again. The Montreal years were over, but they could not escape the ways in which Quebec had shaped them emotionally, psychologically, and culturally. From now on they would be en passage, restless, relocating frequently within the small Ontario city they made their home, regularly changing addresses, moving on. Their life in Ontario would confirm the old adage, “Once a Quebecer, always a Quebecer.”

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11 Heady Years at Guelph, 1965–1970 Constructing a History Department

On 19 February 1965 Stanford Reid returned to his suite in Douglas Hall and “startled [his] wife with the information that [they were] moving to Guelph.” Events had moved quickly since his initial inquiry to Dean Murdo MacKinnon. Looking through the academic vacancies listing of the Canadian University Federation, Stanford had spied an advertisement for staff at all levels for embryonic Wellington College of the new University of Guelph. “For some time now I have been increasingly disturbed by the social and political developments in the Province of Quebec,” his letter of application began. “Although the outsider may at the present moment feel that all seems relatively calm and undisturbed, there is undoubtedly a ground-surge of French Canadian nationalism, which, after 1967 may well result in a veritable explosion. Because of this I have grave fears as to what may happen to McGill University, and feel that perhaps now might be the best time to move elsewhere.”1 Reid went on to say that “I have been watching with growing interest the developments in higher education in Ontario, and have been wondering if it would be possible to take part in this movement in the recently founded universities. They seem to have so much more life and vigour than some of the older and more firmly established institutions.” Indeed he had been observing these developments for several years. As York University was being set up in 1959, he had written to Murray Ross, then vice-president of the University of Toronto and soon-to-be president of the new Toronto university.2 He had applied to Ross for a possible position in the new history department at York,

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adding: “You may perhaps wonder ... why I should be interested in moving. There are a number of reasons. One is perhaps, that being a native of Montreal and a graduate of McGill, I am beginning to feel that a move would be a good idea just on general principles. Another is that I am beginning to doubt even Premier Sauvé’s ability to solve the financial problems with which McGill and the other Protestant universities are faced in this province. Undoubtedly a further reason is that I am intrigued by the idea of taking part in the founding of a new university.” There is no record of any response Murray Ross may have made. Stanford Reid continued to be restless. In 1963 he spent an evening with his friend Professor Bertie Wilkinson of the University of Toronto and, in the course of conversation, asked Wilkinson to speak to J.M.S. Careless, head of the history department, about Reid’s interest in a move. A follow-up letter to Careless describes again Reid’s concerns about “the political situation here in Quebec, and my fears of what may eventually happen with the rise of separatism which seems to be gaining a following ... I expressed my views that the English-speaking minority might soon be in serious difficulties ... I was thinking of leaving Quebec if an opportunity for me opened up further west.”3 That he continued to be restless is evidenced by a May 1964 letter to the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at McGill, H.D. Woods, stating that “bluntly I would be willing to consider taking over the chairmanship or whatever it will be called of the humanities’ division of the faculty. After twelve years running residences, including the chairing of the committee which built three new ones, I am getting a little tired of it all and feel that I would like a change ... I would wish to continue teaching and writing, but at least I would not have to live twenty-four hours with my problems.”4 Of all of these inquiries, it was the new University of Guelph that got back to Reid quickly and evidenced interest. Indeed, Murdo MacKinnon would remember, thirty-five years later, his excitement when he opened Reid’s letter of 26 January 1965. “Here was a full Professor at McGill University” – and he intoned the word ‘McGill’ with a mixture of awe and surprise – “who was asking for a position at our unknown, and still to be formed, University. I couldn’t believe our luck.” 5 For Reid, of course, time was running out. He disingenuously described himself to MacKinnon as “just over fifty years of age.” Actually he was soon to turn fifty-two, old by the standards of the day to be starting a new career in a young university. It was really now or never for a move. MacKinnon contacted Reid immediately. Stanford cleared his schedule and went for a first interview on 14 February. Two days later, he was following up a request for further references on his application. He

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chose Professors Bertie Wilkinson of the University of Toronto and Kenneth Setton of the University of Pennsylvania. From his McGill days he offered Ken Hare, formerly of the McGill geography department and then at King’s College, University of London, and Cyril James. He returned to Guelph three days later and was hired on the spot, dependent on acceptance by the board of governors on 23 February. When that approval came, Stanford immediately wrote a letter of resignation from McGill to Charles Bayley as head of the history department. The press was informed of the appointment and an announcement appeared the next day in the Montreal papers. A fortnight later, he was back at Guelph to attend a meeting of the Arts Building Committee. Within two weeks, he and Priscilla were house-hunting in Guelph. The university carried on a steady correspondence with Reid, seeking his expertise on plans for university residences and the new library. On 27 May, Stanford Reid led his final McGill convocation as university marshal. The next day the moving van came to Douglas Hall, and on 30 May the Reids arrived at 80 Queen Street West in Guelph, high on a hill overlooking the Speed River. A long-time friend from the Ottawa Valley visited them and described the home as “your enchanted castle.”6 It was a beautiful turn-of-the-century mansion. It all seemed to happen so quickly. Many who did not know the full story wondered why Stanford Reid was so willing to pull up stakes, leave a full professorship at one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious universities, and go to a new, untried institution with neither tradition nor reputation. Stanford replied to his sceptics: “When I left McGill, I was repeatedly told that I was going to a second-rate ‘cow college,’ but the fact is that I had a greater opportunity to do creative work there than I ever would have at McGill where [there were] long years of tradition and limited innovations particularly in the Faculty of Arts.”7 One of Reid’s younger faculty colleagues at Guelph, when asked how he would explain the move, noted that the new challenge “energized Stanford.” Then he added: “He came because his career was going nowhere at McGill.”8 The Reids did not stay on Queen Street West for long. In their thirtyone years in Guelph, they moved nine times within the city and acquired and sold various out-of-town properties on the Saugeen River, in Washago, and in Florida. Their frequency of moving became legendary, and opinion was not always positive. The number of moves suggested something else: the Reids, following their relatively stable existence in Montreal (in a quarter of a century they had only three addresses) never felt fully settled again.

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Murdo MacKinnon, who persuaded Stanford Reid to come to Guelph, had been hired in a similarly casual manner the year before. He met the newly appointed president of the university, J.D. MacLachlan,9 at a wedding reception. MacLachlan chatted about the new university he had been asked to establish. Half an hour later, he met up with MacKinnon again and offered him the position of dean of the Arts and Sciences College. MacKinnon was in line to become the new dean at the University of Western Ontario, so MacLachlan had to be very persuasive. He brought MacKinnon back from Quebec, where he had been taking French immersion, and signed him up on the spot. MacKinnon had little idea what he was in for. The start-up date was pushed ahead from 1966 to 1965 because it appeared that Brock University in St Catharines was due to open that year and Guelph did not want to be short of the mark. Murdo MacKinnon called Guelph “Canada’s first instant university.” He would recall those heady early days when he became dean in the autumn of 1964: “The directions were – get your buildings up, hire your faculty and staff, let the world know that you are accepting students, get moving as fast as you can, don’t worry about the money. So, for the first three years, at least, we got a hundred per cent of any budget request we made to the province ... The period from 1964 to 1967 was very exciting because that was the period of growth and change and freedom and great encouragement from the community, from the province and from the founding colleges.”10 In the early 1960s, the number of young people of university age almost doubled as the so-called baby boomers reached eighteen. The Deutsch Commission – named after chairman John James Deutsch, principal of Queen’s University – recommended that there be a wideranging expansion of tertiary education in the province of Ontario. One idea, buried in the report, suggested that arts classes be started at the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph. There was strong local support for such an idea. Thomas McEwen, a Guelph businessman and chairman of the city’s board of education11 had formed a study committee. They had sent briefs to the premier of Ontario “assuring him [the committee] could ‘muster a great deal of nonpartisan support’ if the Federated Colleges, as they were then known, could form the nucleus of a university.”12 McEwen and his committee stated emphatically that their collective business experience “prompts us to believe that the prorating of operational and administrative costs over a larger number of students would result in improved efficiency.” That community support for the new university would prove significant as Stanford Reid solicited community support for his various projects and interests.

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On 27 February 1963, during the presentation of estimates for the Department of Agriculture, Ontario Premier John Robarts announced to the provincial legislature that a new university would indeed be created in Guelph. Both opposition parties, the New Democrats and the Liberals, were positive. Following the announcement, J.D. MacLachlan (then president of the three combined colleges) was asked to come up with a plan. MacLachlan was influenced by two American universities: Cornell and the University of California at Davis. By early summer 1964, a bill establishing the university was introduced in the legislature, passed, and given royal assent. The three federated schools, Ontario Agricultural College, the Veterinary College and the Macdonald Institute, were to be amalgamated and expanded into a new university at Guelph. A newly created board of governors, retaining many members of the existing board of regents, would be chaired by Thomas McEwen. Reid, as head of the history department, would play a prominent part on the board of governors and thus help to shape the university. During October of 1964, the name of the new university was under discussion. The student newspaper had some ideas, all humorous: “Political Football University,” or “Hamlet University – To Be Or Not to Be.”13 John Robarts wanted Guelph University, but that name lent itself to unfortunate abbreviations such as Goo-U or Guru U. MacLachlan made the final choice: the University of Guelph. The name provided him with an opportunity to state a vision: “The University of Guelph is not ambitious to be great in all things, but will strive for excellence in those areas and disciplines which can be enriched by the traditions of the past and by opportunities of the future. We intend to maintain our well-established reputation for research and services to agriculture and to rural society in general, to unfold new fields of endeavour; and wish to be known as a university that is fully aware of tradition, yet resilient and responsive to the demands of a new age.”14 That year of preparation, 1964–65, MacKinnon worked day and night appointing heads of the eight departments in the Arts and Sciences College, which he named Wellington after the county in which Guelph was located. In doing so he beat out the new University of Waterloo, which had designs on the name as well. After a long day in the office, he would make decisions such as the colours of academic hoods and gowns at night. He was responsible for the construction of three buildings: a residence, a classroom building (later named for him) that replaced the old chemistry building, and a new library honouring its donor, auto magnate R.S. McLaughlin of Oshawa. MacLachlan, MacKinnon, McLaughlin: the presence of so many

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Scottish names augured well for Stanford finding the new university a congenial place to work. Particularly he and MacKinnon developed a strong relationship based on a common cultural legacy. MacKinnon was the son of a United Church minister. His wife, Elizabeth, a favourite of Priscilla and Stanford’s, grew up in Toronto in Bloor Street United Church under the ministry of George Pidgeon. As sons of the manse, both Stanford and Murdo loved to tell stories, were fascinated by family links and ecclesiastical lore, and were outspoken. MacKinnon’s field was English, Reid’s history, but Reid had done honours in both. Together in the early days at Wellington College, theirs would be a formidable alliance. “I am busier than a one-armed paper hanger” was Reid’s way of describing those first tumultuous months at Guelph. His immediate concern was to build up a curriculum and establish a faculty. Murdo MacKinnon had already hired someone to draw up lists of possible course offerings for the College of Arts and Sciences, researched from catalogues solicited from ten different universities. On arrival, Stanford Reid, as a department head, was given this list of course offerings. Many of them had to be modified, expanded, or eliminated in the years to come. As late as June 1968 MacKinnon and Reid sought permission from the senate for “the Department of History to delete from the Calendar courses which have not yet been given or which may not be given in the immediate future.” “I am now in the throes of trying to get myself straightened out on the trimesteral system for next summer and autumn.” One of the innovations at the University of Guelph was a three-semester system that would utilize facilities in the most economical way. It would also mean that professors would have more time off for research as they would be teaching for only two semesters per year and have a third for research. For students it meant that they could complete their courses in two-thirds of the time usually required and thus would impose a smaller financial burden with less likelihood of running up large debts. The three-semester system would inevitably affect the development of curriculum. After five years of experience with the three-semester system, Stanford would express serious misgivings to Percy Smith, the academic vice-president of the university. “I see very definite disadvantages to the three-semester system and I believe they outweigh the advantages.”15 He enumerated some of these disadvantages: “many undergraduates drive themselves to exhaustion ... and do not get the full advantage of their education ... do not have the time to digest ... some of them are so tired they are simply not taking in very much.” But for

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graduate students, the disadvantages of the three-semester system were “even greater.” Because the trimester system meant professors were away one semester a year, graduate students were “handed on to someone else.” And for faculty the system also had drawbacks, imposing – in comparison to other universities – the “heaviest load in terms of teaching .. one man has to carry graduate students for another ... faculty at the University ... [is] having to do quite a bit more because they have to carry each other’s burdens during at least two semesters each year.” And even the library staff suffered: they had “to work at top speed for eleven months a year instead of for nine as in other universities.” There were three members of the initial Department of History: Reid, Assistant Professor Margaret Evans, and a lecturer, Kathleen Fowler, who came from Guelph Collegiate and Vocational Institute and only stayed one year. Margaret Evans was a long-time colleague, succeeding him as head of the department in 1970. Dean of Women at Waterloo University College (as it was then known), she had also taught English and history at the University of Western Ontario. Like Reid, she was a Presbyterian, joining Knox Church when she moved to Guelph. She and Stanford were congenial, partly due to the fact that, as an older woman, schooled in a different time, she was deferential to him as head of the department. Reid had absolute power to choose his colleagues in the department. A 1970s faculty appointee, Terry Crowley, reflecting on Stanford Reid’s record, said that “It would be fair to say that Stanford initially created a departmental mix of specialities that reflected the assumption of the post-World War II era.” Sometimes he would go through a perfunctory interview but even that could be waived if the applicant was well known to him or came highly recommended. There was no need to go through either interviews or a vetting process because there were neither colleagues to be consulted or a hiring process to be followed. One early appointee comments: “The University of Guelph that had emerged out of the provincial department of agriculture’s civil service provided for department heads who possessed real power rather than the chairmen developed during the second presidency of William C. Winegard who came from the University of Toronto.”16 By October of 1965 Reid was finding the search for faculty a challenge. He wrote to Charles Bayley at McGill: “I am now back home after my whirlwind search for academics on the other side, and I can assure you the crop was not very heavy. Men [sic] are scarce and as a result they have no trouble in finding jobs over there and so unless there is some other motive, they simply do not want to move. However, I may have a couple lined up for future operations ...” And to

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Donald Masters (courtesy Marjorie Masters)

Norman Bindoff: “So far I have made the decision on only one man and he is a Canadian historian. I am going to be spending a bit of time right after New Years interviewing people in the States and then I shall be able to make up my mind. I still have my eye on your medievalist whom you recommended to me, and I also have my eye on a modern historian at Glasgow, but I want to find out what everything is like over here and then I shall make my decisions.”17 The Canadian historian to whom he referred was Donald C. Masters, who, like Reid, was frustrated by Quebec politics and was happy to be enlisted for Guelph after many years at Bishop’s University in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, his had been a distinguished career, teaching alongside Arthur Lower at Wesley College in Winnipeg. He had written several books in the field of Canadian history and was a frequent contributor

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to periodicals. His appointment added considerable gravitas to the new department. Like Reid the son of a clergyman, Masters had been associated with him in the publishing of Reformation Today and shared a commitment to mainline evangelical Canadian Protestantism. Reid also approached Mary Rogers, a medievalist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Mary was the daughter of a Canadian minister who had migrated to the United States. She was a member of Tenth Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, and had met Reid when he was preaching there for their minister, his long-time friend from Montreal days, Mariano DiGangi. When Reid offered her the job, she jumped at the opportunity. Other appointees helped to create greater diversity. Clarence Munford, a black American, was teaching in Enugu in Nigeria when he applied for a position. Following studies at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, he had earned a D.Phil. from the University of Leipzig, then in communist East Germany. He was the third Afro-American to get a Fulbright Fellowship. Munford’s visa was held up in Ottawa because of suspicions that he might be a communist. His strong Marxist and racial commitments only became apparent, it was alleged, after he received permanent status as a landed immigrant in Canada two years later. His courses in Black and African history were immensely popular. Munford would have the ultimate distinction of having a centre for black students on the Guelph campus named after him. Edinburgh-born Ranald Nicholson arrived in 1967. With a D.Phil. from Oxford, his field was fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Scotland. The perennial bachelor, he would decamp whenever possible to do research in Scotland and in Spain. He published widely, something that Reid always valued in academics. At the conclusion of that year W.W. “Stefan” Straka joined as a specialist in Eastern European studies. Though his father was Polish and he was born in Poland just before the outbreak of the war, he had been raised in Britain and had an interest in the intersections of Slav and Scottish cultures. Straka had done his master’s and Ph.D. with Reid at McGill.18 He arrived in Guelph following eighteen months as head of the Historical Division of the Centennial Commission, where he coordinated grant applications and supervised publications as well as ensuring their distribution to public libraries. In 1968 David Murray received a doctorate from Cambridge and accepted a teaching appointment at Guelph. A former student of Donald Masters when an undergraduate at Bishop’s, Murray would go on to a distinguished career, succeeding Reid and Evans as head of the department in 1975 and Murdo MacKinnon and Paul Settle in 1980 as third dean of the College of Arts (as Wellington College became known

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after 1970). Murray’s field was the Americas, particularly slavery and the slave trade, and Canadian-American relations. That same autumn Lew Abbott, son of a Canadian Supreme Court judge from Westmount, had also came to teach history at Guelph. Abbott had also been a student of Donald Masters at Bishop’s, done a master’s at McGill under Reid (as well as a law degree), and then went on to a Ph.D. at London. While Abbott was completing his doctorate, Reid visited him in London and, over a whiskey, offered him a position. 1968 was also the year that David Farrell, with a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario, arrived to teach American history. In 1969 Stanford made what he would later describe as his greatest mistake in hiring. John Buchanan was a Presbyterian minister, a Scot, who was a graduate of Knox College and held a doctorate from the University of Toronto. He seemed very compatible with Reid, and it was anticipated he would fit in well with the rest of the department. Unfortunately, when Buchanan did not return from Scotland to teach in the autumn of 1970 after an initial year of instruction, and then continued to absent himself from the university, the appointment became mired in litigation. In order to fill the gap, Stanford hurriedly returned from a sabbatical in Europe to teach Buchanan’s courses. The unexpected interruption delayed the publication of his biography of John Knox, which had been scheduled for the 400th anniversary of Knox’s death in 1972. It would be a costly lapse of judgment. David Murray summarized the three accomplishments of the Reid years at Guelph: the establishment of a graduate degree program, the creation of a Scottish Studies specialty for the history department, and the acquisition of one of the most comprehensive resources in North America for research in primary sources for Scottish history.19 That graduate students were willing to come with Reid to an untested university was, according to Murdo MacKinnon, one of his greatest gifts to Guelph.20 Robert Wilson and Michael Brown were the first in the Guelph graduate history program. “I had been accepted at McGill,” Wilson recalls, “but in the spring of 1965 he wrote to tell me he was going to Guelph to found a History Department and asked if I would like to join him.”21 Both Wilson and Brown had been raised as conservative Baptists in a culture that did not find the secular university congenial. They were typical of many graduate students that Reid attracted to Guelph. The pattern established at McGill was now to be true of Guelph: Reid seemed to have no difficulty drawing students – particularly those with an evangelical background or an interest in Scottish studies – to work on advanced degrees with him as their mentor and guide. In 1967 Wilson, a graduate of evangelical Gordon

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College on the North Shore of Boston, was one of the first to receive a graduate degree in arts at the University of Guelph. His thesis, The British Evangelical Reaction to the Indian Mutiny of 1857, had been prepared under Reid’s guidance. Wilson was accepted in January 1967 as the first Ph.D. candidate in the history department. Six years later, he was awarded the doctorate with a two-volume opus of 556 pages titled A House Divided: British Evangelical Parliamentary Influence in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century, 1860–1902. Michael Brown’s thesis, The Reformation in Edinburgh, 1559–1561, completed in 1969, was one of the earliest Scottish studies, and was prepared under Reid’s supervision. Brown and Wilson have had distinguished careers. Michael Brown became secretary of the senate of the university. After twenty years of teaching at Atlantic Baptist College in Moncton, Robert Wilson went on to teach church history at Acadia Divinity College and become director of its graduate program. “Stanford Reid’s influence helped me build on my background by broadening horizons and seeking truth in a broader sphere. I learned a lot of theology from Dr Reid, probably by osmosis, and his reformed view of the world has certainly become my own,” Wilson recalls.22 “He pushed the graduate programme to its limits.” David Murray went on to describe the steady succession of candidates as “a stable of graduate students,” people who wanted to work with Reid and be supervised by him in their research.23 During his years at Guelph, he averaged between eight and twelve graduate students a year, usually divided evenly between the master’s and the Ph.D. program. In offering a graduate program, the history department was the first in the humanities at Guelph to provide “full service.” In November 1968 and again the following August, the history department reported to the senate that it had a total of twenty-eight master’s students and ten in the doctoral program. It was the highest number in any department in Wellington College. Today the Scottish Studies program alone cites sixty graduate degree theses from the department of history between 1967 and 2001. This flow of scholarly research, much of it related to obscure aspects of church history that few other than Stanford Reid would know about (much less appreciate), is a direct tribute to his pioneering efforts in setting up a graduate program. A further initiative in graduate study came as a result of an evening in the autumn of 1969 that the Reids spent at the home of Kenneth and Dorothy Davis in Waterloo. Davis had gone to the University of Waterloo the previous year as professor of history and had known Reid at McGill when he pastored a Baptist Church in Montreal. They discussed a jointly sponsored Ph.D. program in sixteenth-century history

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between their two universities. It took two years to work out the details with the University of Waterloo, and they had to get government approval to offer such a graduate program. Reid and Davis were approved by their respective universities for Ph.D. supervision and as such were given status in both departments. Davis credits Reid24 with having helped in the approval process for doctoral work at the University of Waterloo. The Guelph-Waterloo Consortium in Reformation History, as it was named, lasted until Reid retired in 1979 and Davis left Waterloo a year later to go to Trinity Western University. The teaching faculty included Lew Abbott, Ken Davis, Walter Klassen of Conrad Grebel College, John New, Ranald Nicholson, and Reid. Supporting faculty were drawn from the history, music, literature, and sociology fields. There was limited financial aid for teaching fellows. Though only the two universities were officially involved, eventually Queen’s and McMaster historians in the field joined in for the consortium’s seminars. Reid and Davis jointly organized a successful Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference at Guelph, the first of its kind in Canada. Davis described Reid as “an excellent and visionary administrator, a rigorous academic and a vigorous, unapologetically Christian scholar.” “We agreed,” he recalled, “that a teacher in a secular university had to do good history and work hard at it, should be prepared to defend in a scholarly fashion a Christian view of history as a valid scholarly option in the Academy and demonstrate its significance, and always conduct oneself as a respected colleague.”25 The success of the department and of Reid’s promotional activities that lay behind it could, as always, be two-edged. Reid was aggressive and assertive in establishing his claim to grants, donations, and a generous chunk of the budget. He sometimes was perceived as boasting, and this “was not appreciated by others in the university.”26 At the same time, his graduate students were grateful for his willingness to go to bat for them. One of them spoke for many others when he wrote in the published version of his thesis: “Professor W. Stanford Reid has offered wise counsel and encouragement over a number of years.”27 “He was always concerned about community involvement by the professional historian,” a colleague in the department later observed.28 On coming to Guelph, Stanford Reid was tireless in continuing his lifelong commitment to popularize history. He could provide great entertainment. There was a downside to this: sometimes his scholarly work was dismissed as lightweight “after-dinner speeches.” He collected headlines and – the ultimate testimonial to a speaker’s effectiveness – return invitations. In September 1965 he told the Guelph Canadian Club that

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Stanford Reid in his office at MacKinnon Hall, University of Guelph, c. 1970 (courtesy Audio Visual Services Department, University of Guelph)

(headline in the Guelph Guardian) “History Exposes Phony Ideas” or (headline in the Guelph Daily Mercury) “Should Study History [to] Understand Problems.” He had only been in Guelph a few months when he was asked to open the fall season of the Guelph Historical Society. From April to June of 1966, Reid provided a non-credit extension course at the university entitled “Highlights of Scottish History.” Priscilla was also active in local history concerns. She solicited, on behalf of the Guelph Historical Society, “any residents of Guelph and

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district who may be interested in the preservation and collection of local history.”29 She utilized her Montreal experience to give leadership in historic preservation in Wellington County, capitalizing on the interest created by Canada’s centennial year of 1967. For that celebration, the Guelph Construction Association donated a building with the idea that it would become a museum. Priscilla Reid was chosen as president of the Guelph Museum Board. The property, 88 Wyndham Street, was opened in 1967, a curator was appointed, and many visited the popular site. Priscilla Reid herself, sometimes in historical costume, made frequent appearances there and in the pages of the Guelph Daily Mercury. She was tireless in encouraging the restoration of the birthplace of Guelph native John McCrae, the doctor who had written “In Flanders Field” while doing military service in France during the First World War. The house had just been bought with a large mortgage by the McCrae Birthplace Society. Popularizing local history was the first step toward an overall strategy Reid developed soon after he came to Guelph. He had realized through his historical and Presbyterian connections that Guelph was a centre for Scottish immigration to Canada. Indeed, one of the very first master’s theses was a study of The Canada Company, 1826–1853, researched by Robert Lee in 1967. The City of Guelph had been the creation of Scottish novelist John Galt, whose town plan had streets radiating out from a central point. Galt’s Canada Company, headquartered in London, set out to sell agricultural land, mainly (as it developed) to Scottish immigrants. Galt, as a loyal monarchist, named the city after the medieval Guelf family whose descendant, the Hanoverian George I, had become British king in 1714. Guelph also had two of the larger and more prosperous Presbyterian churches in Canada, and the whole area was permeated by Scottish lore and tradition. It is not certain at what point Stanford Reid saw the whole development of a Scottish Studies theme as an asset both for his department and for the university. Certainly, from the very start, he sought to capitalize on the Scottish origins of Wellington County. His fascination with local history had always been there. And, in spite of being half English, he was the quintessential Scotto-phile, wearing his kilt with great aplomb when the occasion demanded it. The first step in setting up a Scottish Studies Department was establishing an interdepartmental advisory committee “to coordinate graduate studies in the history, sociology and literature of Scotland and Scottish settlements in Canada.” The committee consisted of seven members of the faculty: four from history, two from sociology and anthropology, and one from the English department.30 The emphasis

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was to be placed on Scotland in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and nineteenth centuries and on Scottish migrations and settlement in Canada. Stanford Reid was to be chairman. The committee organized colloquia at the University of Guelph in Scottish Studies. The first was held on 3 February 1968 and provided a platform for newly appointed Ranald Nicholson to be introduced with a paper on Highlanders as domesticated and “wild.” David Wilson of the University of Minnesota explained why the Sassenach never won over the Scot. Alexander Brodie, a local secondary school teacher who was soon to join the English department at Guelph, analysed the Western Ontario Scottish literary tradition. Reid was quoted in the Daily Mercury as hoping “that the colloquium would lead to the establishment of an Institute for Scottish studies at Guelph.”31 A second colloquium held 7 December 1968 developed an interdisciplinary approach to the theme of immigration. Speakers were University of Waterloo geographer A.G. MacLellan on “Canadian Pre History – The Case of the Scottish Highlands,” Margaret Evans on “Scottish Pioneer Settlement in Upper Canada,” Trent University’s David MacMillan reflecting, as an Australian, on Scottish immigration to the Antipodes, and, from McGill, Michael Maxwell on the Ulster Plantation as “Scotland’s First Colonial Venture.” Stanford Reid noted that the themes chosen were selective “and could touch upon only a very few of the aspects of Scottish Migration. Nevertheless, it was felt that such studies as have been presented would at least give some indication of the widespread movement of Scots across the world over the past three hundred or more years.”32 The scheduling of colloquia was unpredictable and often coincided with times Reid was in Guelph or a visiting scholar was available. On 4 April 1970 at the third colloquium, Reid led off with a study of “The Lion Rampant in Sixteenth-Century France,” Guelph sociologist K.J. Duncan spoke about local Scottish settlement, and Douglas Young, who had recently left McMaster for the University of North Carolina, issued a call for Scots nationalism: “Though most Scots today are timorous smug folk, with no fire in their bellies and no inspiration in their souls, it might well be that later generations of Scots would realize the best that is inherent in the national traditions, and make Scotland not only a prosperous country in its own affairs but even in some ways exemplary to the world at large.”33 Robert the Bruce had done no better at Bannockburn. The fourth and fifth colloquia were held in 1971, on 27 March and 2 June. A sixth took place two years later, on 29 April. On that occasion Reid gave the first paper on “John Knox, Revolutionary or

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Reformer?,” based on work that he was doing for the biography that was finally to appear the following year. His conclusion extolled Knox as “one of the moulders of western constitutional thought.”34 The last Scottish colloquium papers appeared in 1974. By that time, Scottish Tradition, a new journal, had been appearing for three years. The second issue, in the winter of 1971, sounded a note familiar to those contributors who had assured Reid, when he reminded them of a long-past deadline, that their article “was in the mail”: “The Editor would apologize for the lateness of the appearance of this issue ... but the trouble has been that some who promised to write articles failed to produce.” Unlike other Reid periodicals, Scottish Tradition has continued to publish and is a highly respected journal of Scottish history and experience. Publication of Scottish Tradition was taken over by the Canadian Association for Scottish Studies, established in the late 1980s as a Scottish Studies Foundation to raise funds for Scottish Studies in Canada.35 Stanford Reid’s commitment, when he came to Guelph, was to give Scottish-Canadians an understanding of their rich heritage. He provided impetus, cohesion, and credibility for the enterprise as a scholarly pursuit. The project has never looked back, radiating out from Guelph throughout North America as interest grew and opportunities expanded. As Elizabeth Ewan, head of Scottish Studies at the University of Guelph stated at the time of his death: “Thanks to his efforts, the study of Scotland continues to flourish in North America.”36 In David Murray’s analysis, the third contribution Stanford Reid made to the University of Guelph was to establish its library as a centre with a worldwide reputation for its collection of primary documents of Scottish history. “The University of Guelph Library is known,” so its promotional material states without excessive modesty, “for its extensive Scottish Studies collection which is the largest in the world outside the United Kingdom.” It dates that collection back to 1965. Stanford Reid was the initiator of this unique collection, now described by the university as “the finest in the world.” The origins of this collection can be traced back to an article headlined “Should Store Old Records at University,” which appeared in the Daily Mercury in October 1965. It introduced the community to what would be Reid’s familiar refrain: “Old family documents or company papers often provide valuable research material for historians, according to Dr W. Stanford Reid ... Dr Reid suggested that any such papers in the Guelph area could be turned over to the university archives for safekeeping. They would contribute to resources available to future

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graduate students studying the development of this region.” Reid continued, “At the present much work is being done in providing the university library with student research material on microfilm.”37 In collaboration with the chief librarian at the University of Guelph, Lachlan MacRae, he acquired collection after collection of valuable primary documents. Reid scanned book catalogues as they arrived from Scotland. He cultivated antiquarian book dealers in Britain, who quickly got to know him as a friend from whom they could get an immediate response if an opportunity arose and their need for immediate cash was pressing. He shamelessly solicited contributions from wealthy foundations and friends of more modest means. If he heard of something worthwhile, he would not rest until he had successfully raised the required cash. Sometimes that meant buying it himself and then seeking to raise the necessary finances. He combined the zeal of an entrepreneur, a promoter, and a private detective. The material Reid thus collected for the University of Guelph is staggering in its scope, diversity, and present value. Reid was able to persuade his friend A.R. MacRae, a local physician and fellow Scot, to purchase a collection of the Campbell of Monzie family papers covering the period 1416 to 1811. Reid was proud of a collection of 110 documents relating to the Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843, “one of the largest collections of disruption pamphlets in existence.”38 The Lebel collection of Campbell papers from Kildonan in Sutherlandshire was another prize acquisition. He bought a complete run from 1774 to 1814 of The Edinburgh Advertiser, “Scotland’s most influential newspaper.” The library acquired, again under Reid, one of the few complete sets in North America of the Scottish History Society, founded in 1886. There are extensive Scottish burgh records, genealogical data, rare maps; the list of Reid’s purchases for the library goes on and on. Today, given both availability and market realities, many of these materials would be unobtainable. Reid did not stop with Scottish material. Local history was also featured, as were Quebec documents, always a subject of interest to Reid. Through being twinned with the Université de Sherbrooke, Guelph had an obvious link with francophone Quebec. Raymond Davies gave the library a magnificent collection of French Canadian material, which included as well a 1485 edition of Thomas Aquinas. “This should have an important influence upon the thinking of the people in our area as a whole on the subject of French-English relations in our nation,” Reid declared.39 Four years after his retirement, as a tribute to Stanford Reid’s foresight, the University of Guelph Library published a collection update of its Scottish material in conjunction with the 1983 Scottish Heritage

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Festival. It summarized his achievement: “No other library is currently committed to developing their Scottish collections to the same extent as the University of Guelph library. Scholars now come from all over the world, including Scotland, to consult the library’s vast resources. And perhaps it is quite appropriate to locate such a collection in a region populated by descendants of so many Scottish pioneers and in a town founded by a Scot.” All this was accomplished from nothing – not even a library building or a university archives – and within fourteen years. In January 1969 Stanford wrote Murdo MacKinnon to state his intention to resign at the conclusion of his five-year term as chairman of the department. “I have been able to do very little writing since I took it on. I gave up the right to a sabbatical year at McGill by coming to Guelph.” He had accumulated “one and a half semesters of development time” and so, in his resignation, had requested a sabbatical for three semesters in order to “give the new chair a chance to come in “without the former chairman, and also founder in my case, looking on all the time.” By leaving when he did he missed a professional review of his years as chairman, which was required if he were to receive a reappointment. One member of the department at the time felt that he “probably would have gotten it for a second five years” had he wanted it. There were many factors in his decision to lay down administrative responsibilities. One of these was the increasing student activism of the late 1960s, which affected the university and particularly the senate where Reid had played an active role since coming to Guelph. J.D.MacLachlan had retired as president in 1967. His successor was Bill Winegard,40 seventeen years younger. Change was in the air. “Reid’s leadership style was from a different time and he had impressed his personality on the department,” a colleague would observe.41 Demands for senate reform, with students elected to the board, open discussions, and student-faculty evaluations were all part of the university scene at that time. While Canada did not have a Vietnam War, the mood of student dissent and anger nonetheless crossed the forty-ninth parallel and created an explosive situation, even at a provincial university such as Guelph. By late 1968, the senate approved under pressure “a series of conferences on the general subject of university education and its role and function in modern society.”42 “Who Really Runs The University?” was the high-voltage issue chosen for the first debate, to be held 12 February 1969. Television personality and McGill professor Patrick Watson was in the chair;

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participants included student body president Don Langford, university president W.C. Winegard, and chairman of the board of governors Ronald S. Ritchie. Stanford Reid represented the faculty. 1500 people crowded the university gymnasium. Students present had been whipped into an atmosphere of intense excitement: who held the power in the university – the president, the board of governors, the faculty, or did they? Two panellists issued immediate disclaimers: President Winegard defended the government’s allocation of funds to the university. Chairman Ritchie claimed that “universities were essentially run by the faculty and students and that administrators simply enacted policy already determined. In cases where the administration did form policy, it was his conviction that it was done on behalf of faculty and students who had defaulted on their obligations.” Reid took a politically risky position, challenging both Winegard and Ritchie as being disingenuous. There were few decisions by administrators that did not affect the academic community. “The running of the university was not all sweetness and light, with students and faculty playing the leading policymaking role as the first two speakers indicated.” The governors, whom he called “a civil service,” were playing a much larger part than “the back-up function” they should be performing. He closed by stating that the faculty must assert themselves more than they had previously. According to the report the next day in the university paper, Langford, on behalf of the students, “echoed the words of Dr Reid calling for a stronger coalition between faculty and students.”43 It was classic Stanford Reid. He was not afraid to take unpopular positions that would affirm the rights of the marginalized or the disenfranchised. Students at Sir George Williams University in Montreal may have destroyed a million dollars of computer equipment and an older generation might be in shock about the lawlessness that seemed to prevail on the college campus, but as an historian, Reid took the longer view and was sympathetic to the rebellious. As a Calvinist, and as an outsider to the powerbrokers, he had often advocated unpopular positions that challenged the orthodoxies of the hour. Reid was a true democrat. The right to protest against injustice was one that he valued. But at that point, he did not fully appreciate the anti-democratic intimidation and muzzling of dissent that increasingly seemed to mark the student protest of the period. Violence and threats to freedom were not long in coming. Two months after the Patrick Watson panel, open senate meetings were approved. There was a caution, however: “interference or disruption of Senate proceedings by occupants of the Gallery shall not be tolerated. The Chairman shall either order the spectators causing a disrup-

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tion to withdraw from the Gallery, or he shall close the meeting.” The provision was soon to be tested. In April of 1970 a senate confrontation that shaped the Reid legend occurred. The next day, he described to former Guelph librarian Lachlan MacRae, recently moved to the National Library in Ottawa, what happened: The Senate meeting last night has brought us to the lowest point yet. There has been a squabble, as you probably may remember, over a Miss Evans in Sociology, whose contract has not been renewed on the grounds of inefficiency etc. and she has fought back against Murdo and Ted Hadwen. Large dossiers of documents have been floating around the faculty on the subject and last night we had the Senate meeting when a group of her supporters turned up in the gallery and proceeded to bring all business to a stop. They demanded a report from the Executive of the Senate on the subject because they wanted to discuss the matter. Winegard was away and Bert Matthews was in the chair and seemed to be rather afraid of offending the students. The outcome was that after a good deal of conflict in which Eugene Benson took a rather strong stand against the students, Bert adjourned the meeting for half an hour and then when we came back in they started all over again. The noise was quite deafening and Don Masters tried to propose adjournment, but [he] could not be heard so I rose up and opened my lungs with the result that they heard and the meeting was adjourned ... it is all that they can expect when they have open Senate meetings.44

Reid was an able debater, Murdo MacKinnon recalls.45 Aside from his powerful set of lungs and booming voice, he had considerable experience in asserting his opinions through years of conflict in ecclesiastical bodies. Quick on his feet, able to thrust and parry in debate with aplomb, he could be a formidable foe if he was not in favour of a motion. He did not, however, carry grudges, and after he had taken issue with someone at a meeting he would continue to relate to them amicably but directly. But he did not suffer fools gladly. There were other changes that were not congenial to Reid. At a senate meeting in October 1967, a committee had been set up to examine “Long Range Needs Relating to University Government.” With MacKinnon seconding, Reid had moved two amendments: that the words “viability and functionality of the existing structures” be struck out and that there be a clearer description of the composition of this committee. But the committee did its work, and in 1970 Wellington College of Arts and Sciences was split in two. From now on there would be a College of Arts and a College of Social Sciences. Arts would include history, as well as English language and literature, fine arts, and philosophy. Social sciences embraced

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economics (a discipline with which Reid as an historian had always had strong links), geography, political science, psychology, and sociology/anthropology. As department head, Reid was isolated. Age-wise there was a wide gap between the three senior members of the department – Reid, Masters and Evans – and the rest, many of whom were still in their twenties. Terry Crowley later wrote, “Even though the bulk of the department had been recruited by Reid, some in the department resented Stanford’s ability to make decisions on his own and ... plotted to get him replaced as head/chair. In the end their scheming came to naught. Reid left when he no longer wished to meet the demands that being chair rather than head made on his time. The need to consult frequently and an increasingly complex committee structure was not to his liking.”46 And the heady days of unlimited Ontario government financial commitment to tertiary education were over. Reid no longer had a blank cheque, such as he had been given when he set up the department in 1965. A.B. McKillop notes in Matters of Mind: The University in Ontario that “University administrators continued to search for stability in times of unpredictable growth or contraction, whether of funds or of students. They worked, as usual, in an uneasy relationship between universities and the state, seeking to maintain academic autonomy while also hoping to obtain a sufficient level of operational funding.”47 It was a balancing act that Reid was no longer prepared to perform. In the early 1960s he had gone through the trauma, as a university administrator, of coping with an unsympathetic government in Quebec and that was one reason why he had left McGill. Now, as he looked into the 1970s, he could see similar trends in Ontario. And he knew it would only get worse. In their 1970 Christmas letter to their friends, Stanford and Priscilla explained his departure as chair of the department: “The other principal piece of news of this year is that I have resigned from the chairmanship of the history department. I have found after thirteen years of administration at McGill and five years here, I had had it. I have been vainly trying to get some writing done and finally decided to get out of the administrative rat-race in order to concentrate on teaching and writing. I demitted the position at the end of July.”48 During the October Crisis of 1970 when Canada seemed about to disintegrate because of terrorism in Quebec, John Harold Plumb49 came to Guelph as one of three people50 commissioned by the Ontario Council on Graduate Studies to do an assessment of the history department’s Ph.D. program. Their time at Guelph would essentially be an evaluation of Reid’s previous five years of work.

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Plumb, Master of Christ’s College Cambridge, was one of the most eminent and formidable historians of the day. After evaluating the program, unlike his two Canadian counterparts, he recommended that the program not be accredited. Plomb spoke highly of Reid personally as a scholar and found his research projects in British history “shrewd and well directed.” But he questioned the basic premise of the department: “The demand for Scottish history specialists is very small, and is more than met by ... the Scottish universities.”51 Indeed, an emphasis on the Celtic fringe was seen to be narrowing rather than broadening. Plumb did not agree with Margaret Evans, who had defended Scottish studies as a legitimate academic pursuit and a way to capitalize on an existing interest. Plumb, who was widely published in eighteenth-century English history, was particularly critical of the lack in the department of a specialist in the Scottish Enlightenment, the period from 1650 to 1800. The University library was “at present inadequate,” and he cited “serious gaps.” On 2 February 1971 the Appraisals Committee of the Council heard the report. Based on Plumb’s judgments, whose international scholarly reputation carried considerable weight, the committee concurred, recommending that the program no longer be approved.52 On appeal, their action was disallowed but there would be limitations imposed as the price for continuing to offer the Ph.D. But by that time, Reid was no longer chairman and the defence of the department was left to his successor, Margaret Evans. At convocation in 1979, in a retirement citation, reference was made to Reid’s accomplishments of 1965 to 1970 at the university. “The five years of Professor Reid’s chairmanship at Guelph saw the faculty numbers quadruple in his department ... full-fledged undergraduate, m.a., and Ph.D. programs developed. Not content merely with getting a department going, he was the moving spirit in organizing the Scottish studies interdepartmental program ... Despite this obviously heavy administrative load, he carried the usual instructional burden, the supervision of his graduate students, and the pursuit of his own research.”53 The first five years at Guelph had been a time of intense effort, frenetic activity, and continuous challenge. Reid’s final nine years as an academic would focus on research and mentoring graduate students. Giving up the heavy (and ever expanding) administrative role he had pioneered now freed him to pursue non-academic interests as well. At fifty-seven, Stanford Reid still had a great deal more to say, to write, and to contribute.

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12 Academic Autumn, 1970–1979 Biographer, Raconteur, and Cognoscente

Throughout his life Stanford Reid was dominated by the figure of John Knox. Defending the Scottish Reformer became an obsession for him. Scots have always had an ambivalent relationship with Knox, who, more than any other, defines their national identity. He remains after almost 500 years, a controversial, even incendiary figure, surrounded by myth and half-truths, inviting revulsion or reverence. Stanford Reid not only spent a lifetime attempting to set the record straight about John Knox. He also set out – consciously or unconsciously – to copy him. James Douglas Morton’s final assessment of Knox at his funeral holds true for Reid. Neither man “feared nor flattered any flesh.” Both had a vein of iron in their character, the theology of John Calvin. Both were theologians and historians, individuals chronicling one of the most formative periods of Scottish history. The sixteenth century saw the shaking of foundations, and the establishment of a new world order that was disrupted only in the twentieth. Further parallels can be drawn. Reid was as much larger than life as Knox and as often misunderstood, ridiculed, and pilloried. Both men felt that the verdict of history would be kinder to them than that of their contemporaries. It was inevitable then that, as the crown of his professional career, Stanford Reid dreamed about writing the definitive life of John Knox. At the same time the prospect terrified him. At a dinner at the Park Plaza Hotel in Toronto in December 1967, Reid shared with the historian Goldwin Smith his vision as well as his fears. It was a fortuitous evening: few were better able to encourage Reid than Goldwin Smith.

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The name he shared with his grandfather resonated with Canadians. The first Goldwin Smith had gone from Oxford to Cornell and finally settled in The Grange in Toronto, all the while advancing causes as diverse as U.S.-Canadian union and anti-Tractarian Liberalism. The grandson and namesake had written three bestselling texts between 1955 and 1960,1 all published by Charles Scribner’s in New York. As Reid would later declare, “I am glad Goldwin Smith put the pressure on me to do this piece of work which I probably would have kept putting off until it would have been too late.”2 By the following summer, Reid had written a proposal, fleshing out his Knox biography. He started with a disclaimer: “a number of biographies of Knox have appeared,” which have “plowed and crossplowed the field.” One book to which he may have been referring was Jasper Ridley’s John Knox, which had just been published by Clarendon Press in the United Kingdom and Oxford University Press in the United States. Ridley, who had previously written two biographies of English Reformers, Nicholas Ridley (a relative) and Thomas Cramner, was not a professional historian but a lawyer. Educated at the Sorbonne and Magdalen College, Oxford, he wrote with a fluent and readable style. His book, numbering almost 600 pages, was erudite and well researched. But in Reid’s opinion it lacked an awareness of the Scottish dimension. It was also unsympathetic toward Knox’s Calvinism. The other Knox biography recently published could not have been more of a contrast. Elizabeth Whitley’s 1960 Plain Mr Knox was more understanding of Knox’s national and theological identity. Elizabeth’s husband, Harry, minister of St Giles Cathedral (or, as Reid preferred to call it with greater accuracy, the High Church of Edinburgh), had invited Stanford to give the second John Knox Memorial Lecture in November 1967. On the recommendation of the previous lecturer, Professor James MacEwen of the University of Aberdeen, Reid chose as his title “John Knox and the Reformation in Edinburgh.” It lasted only fifty minutes, but the location – in the shadow of John Knox’s house and next to his burying place in Parliament Square with its simple “I.K. 1572” – whetted Reid’s appetite for more exposure to his subject. Goldwin Smith encouraged Reid to press on with his vision. Reid provided a single page, double-spaced proposal for the book, which Smith presented to the editors at Scribner’s. “In this work, the plan is to deal with the life of John Knox the sixteenth century Protestant Reformer, not in terms of a detailed tracing of his day-to-day activity, but against the background of his environment,” Reid wrote. He then positioned himself vis à vis the three most recent Knox biographies. Geddes MacGregor’s Thundering Scot (which he felt was full

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of sentimental hype) and the new Ridley biography both emphasized Knox’s political and social milieu, while Elizabeth Whitley’s book was more ecclesiastical. “Like their predecessors,” Reid concluded, “none of them have sought to deal with Knox in his socio-economic context.” Knox had travelled widely and mixed with all strata of society: “the lairds of Lothian, the slaves of the French royal galleys, the high society at the court of Edward VI of England [and] ‘the godly citizens’ of Calvin’s Geneva.” This diversity was important in understanding him and would keep one from judging “Knox as though he were a twentieth century man with all our knowledge.” Instead, Reid’s proposed biography would “seek to ascertain who were his friends – and his enemies – and try to determine not only their religious views but also their socio-economic position and ideas.” Reid’s conclusion, then, was that “from this it should be possible to understand Knox not so much as an ecclesiastic or a political revolutionary, but a sixteenth century Scottish Protestant.”3 Scribner’s responded cautiously to the proposal. Editor Tom Davis, in the historical books division, was equivocal because four recent volumes in his department had not been “notable successes financially.”4 Eventually, a year later, in February 1970, a contract was mailed for Reid’s signed and a cash advance was forwarded. He assured Scribner’s that he was giving up the leadership of the history department on 1 July and would have a full year’s sabbatical: “Consequently I would hope to have the book completed by the autumn of 1971.”5 Accordingly the contract specified a delivery date of 30 October 1971. The aim was to have the book appear in time for the quatrocentenary of Knox’s death on 24 November 1972. This timing proved to be too optimistic. The project was continuously delayed. When a member of the faculty did not return to teach, Reid was called back from his sabbatical to substitute. By November 1972 only three chapters had been sent. An anxious Goldwin Smith relayed to Reid the publisher’s concern: “you told him that it would be done by the end of the year.”6 By March 1973 Reid produced the completed initial typescript with apologies that “academic life these days is full of roadblocks, teaching commitments, interviewing students, etc.”7 Following editing, the completed typescript was forwarded in October 1973. The book finally appeared in July 1974. During that four-year gestation, many distractions kept him from the completion of the biography. In spite of all the plans Reid had made to clear the decks for research, 1971 was a busy year. At St Andrew’s, Guelph, Reid offered a series of eight Sunday evening lectures on the New Testament book of Romans, “The Letter of Paul to Modern

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Man.” Invitations from Presbyterian congregations for Sunday ministry always met with a positive response, and the year was a particularly busy one – from Knox Church, St Catharines to Knox Church, Waterloo, the requests continued to come. Reid also returned to Westminster Seminary and spoke to a student conference on “Reformation, Revolution and Liberty,” taking advantage of the forthcoming anniversary to apply some of the lessons of John Knox to the contemporary scene. At the same time, Priscilla was active in the Women’s Missionary Society, speaking at local groups and also serving for six years as a member of the national wms Council Executive. Her contributions were much appreciated, as evidenced in a letter of thanks when she stepped down: Your gracious and friendly manner permeated the Council Executive meetings. Your timely and thought-provoking Services of Worship, often sharing your varied experiences abroad have been much appreciated by the members. Your ability to express yourself freely and clearly have proved helpful to our executive, as well as your knowledge of Parliamentary procedure. You are not only a gifted speaker but a good listener and many times gave some of the more timid members courage when you made reference to what had been feebly stated. The committees on which you served – particularly the reassessment committee – have benefited from your knowledge and wide experience. We shall miss you very much. Please accept our sincere thanks.8

Stanford Reid continued his connection with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Lorna Raper Hillian, the staff member for high school and university students in Guelph from 1968 to 1972, remembers one occasion when Reid approached her about getting a group of high school students to commit themselves to meet with him for a series of eight studies on “Basic Christianity.” As the teenagers met at the elevator in the Reid’s apartment she “was on tenter hooks knowing that young people often forget or don’t fulfil their commitments. To my delight they kept on coming faithfully. The delightful surprise was Dr Reid. He presented the essentials of the faith in a way the students could understand. He was gracious and loving with them. I believe he received even more enjoyment from his mini-course than the young people did. He really threw himself into it, enjoying the students and the course.”9 She also recalled a visit he once made to the student house for Inter-Varsity on College Street, where he and Priscilla spent a pleasant evening over a meal. And he was usually, at least once a year if not more often, a guest speaker at one of their meetings. As well he formed a close attachment to the Christian Reformed chaplains at the University of Guelph.

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In the summer of 1971, the Reids travelled to Vancouver to help the new Regent College get on its feet. Lectures had started there in the autumn of 1970, and Reid agreed to be a member of the Regent College Council of Reference. For the school’s third summer school, he offered a three-week series of lectures on “Studies in the History of Western Thought,” repeating some of the material he had offered at McGill and Guelph.10 On 29 July 1971 at St Helen’s Anglican Church, Kerrisdale, he spoke on “Christianity as Counter Culture.” He also addressed the leading Plymouth Brethren assembly on the West Coast, Granville Chapel, which had birthed Regent College. He also preached at Kerrisdale and Fairview Presbyterian Churches, where he had many friends. Fairview congregation was experiencing a surge of life under its minister, Ian S. Rennie, who, like Reid, was a church historian and would later teach at Regent College and then go on to serve as dean at Ontario Theological Seminary. Reid became a strong supporter of Regent College. In describing its organization in January 1972 he wrote: “The whole project and its realization is indeed a story of Christian faith and divine faithfulness.” Particularly congenial to him was the school’s attempt, as he described it, to address “one of the major problems of Christian university and college graduates,” which was a failure “to integrate their faith and their academic disciplines.”11 Reid returned to Regent in March 1974 to give two further lectures: “History with All Its Warts – A Christian Perspective” and “Mechanization of Man – A Christian View of Science since 1500.” At that time, he and Principal James Houston had a conversation about the possibility of the Reids settling in Vancouver following retirement and offering his services to the College.12 Houston was to write back after his initial encouragement that “we are in considerable flux” and “our faculty does not consider it legitimate to ask our Finance Committee for another historian on the payroll at this time.”13 “The 400th anniversary of Knox’s death has given me quite a bit of work,”14 Reid wrote in his Christmas letter of 1972. Throughout the year Reid capitalized on the renewed interest in Knox. The press also noted the significance of the year: a potboiler editorial titled “Blast Those Women” caricaturing Knox with the traditional stereotypes appeared in January in the Toronto Star. Stanford was unable to resist a response. The Star had complained that Knox, were he alive today, would blast his proverbial trumpet against the monstrous regiment of working women: “Girls, wives and widows aren’t going to find their place only in the home any more. The trend is irreversible.”15 Reid rose to the bait. “The fact is,” he fumed, “that he wrote the pamphlet in

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1557 before he had had any contact with Mary [Queen of Scots] at all.” Unlike the Gazette or Montreal Star in an earlier day, the Toronto Star declined to publish the letter. Reid was no longer good copy. In March he found a more appreciative audience for John Knox. At the North Carolina Presbyterian Historical Society, he spoke on the topic “John Knox 400 Years After.” The following day, he went on to a conference of Celtic Studies in the Scottish Highland heartland of the United States, Harnett County in North Carolina. His theme, designed to keep his audience from their post-prandial nap, was “John Knox Revolutionary?” After two busy months in Europe, he returned to Canada to deliver on 23 November an academic lecture at Knox College, Toronto, “to mark the fourth centenary of the death of John Knox in Edinburgh.” Church history professor and long-time friend Allan Farris invited him to the Presbyterian theological college that Stanford felt had ignored, if not slighted, him for too long. Reid chose for that Knox College address the title “John Knox and His Interpreters.” In so choosing, he immediately raised the question why, for all his influence, Knox had such bad press. “The question then arises as to why Knox brings forth such strong feeling, either pro or con. No doubt one of the fundamental reasons is that he took a clearcut religious and theological position with which one either agrees or disagrees. But there is also his general attitude on so many matters. Frequently both what he says and the way he says it so coincides or conflicts with our own thought and ways of expression that we tend to react strongly. We may feel that he says what we would like to hear said even in our own day, or we may so disagree with everything that he says and his way of expressing it that we cannot but reject him and his work completely.”16 Predictably, Reid then raised socio-economic issues. Knox was a member of the bourgeoisie, “which seems to have found its needs met by the Reformation teachings and which quickly came to form the core of the movement in Scotland.”17 He then explained Knox’s sense of calling or vocation, which he argued was basic to an understanding of the man: “He saw himself as a preaching, rather than a writing prophet, for it was to the proclamation of the Gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ that he had been called.”18 His third point was that Knox’s source of authority was the scripture and that “he accepted both Calvin’s views on Scripture and his interpretations.” Since Reid had crossed swords with the faculty of Knox College for thirty years over the question of the nature and extent of Biblical inspiration, he was careful to stick to the historical and to leave applications to the listener: “His belief [was] that the Bible is the Word of God and that it was his duty to expound it and apply to his hearers.” Another Knox theme

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congenial to Reid was touched on: “Christianity is something that applies to everyday life and living.” Reid closed with Knox’s deathbed statement: “I never made gain of the sacred word of God, that I never studied to please men, never indulged my own private passions or those of others, but faithfully distributed the talent entrusted to my care for the edification of the Church over which I did watch.”19 Allan Farris listened to tape recordings of the lecture at home while recovering from his first heart attack. “You gave him,” he wrote Reid, “the stature which he deserves and delivered him from the hands of both his friends and his enemies. I am very happy that you had this opportunity to give this lecture in Knox College. As I mentioned in a previous note to you the time was long overdue.”20 The year Reid would finally complete his Knox biography, 1973, was likewise a full one. A lecture series he gave at the Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanter) Seminary in Pittsburgh – “The Social and Intellectual Background of Sixteenth Century Calvinism” – could be considered a spinoff from his research on Knox. On the other hand, a paper presented at the Center for Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton on witchcraft and the occult appeared to be going back to work at the University of Pennsylvania and echoing the research of Henry Lea. During the year, both at a convocation of the Scholastic Honors Society and through the Staley Lectures, he consolidated what would be a happy relationship with Wheaton College and his continuing friendship with philosophy professor Arthur F. Holmes. Using the theme “Every Christian His Own Historian,” Reid spoke at Wheaton’s vast Edman Chapel (attendance compulsory) to 2,000, most of whom were undergraduates, and kept their interest with titles such as “The Dehumanization of History” and “The Demonization of History.” The response at Wheaton prompted five further invitations to give Staley lectures in the next five years. The lectureship had been endowed by a Westchester County, New York, physician and his wife in memory of their parents with the aim of bringing “distinguished Christian scholars ... who truly believe and can clearly communicate to students” to Christian colleges and seminaries. In February of 1975 he gave Staley lectures at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester. There his theme was “The Christian Church in Faith and History,” with such catchy titles as “Does History Repeat Itself?” An appreciative administrator at Roberts wrote, “In the Staley lectures you fulfilled an important need in our community, and your cheerful Christian spirit gave us all a lift.”21 From 21 to 24 February 1978, Reid gave four sets of Staley lectures: first at Covenant College in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he spoke on “Every Christian His Own Historian,” and the week after at

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Ontario Bible College and Theological Seminary in Toronto, on “The Protestant Reformation Today.” In April he went to Storm Lake, Iowa, to Buena Vista College, a Presbyterian Church (USA) institution, where he chose as his theme “Changing Society and Church Renewal.” His final Staley lectures, “The Christian View of History,” were delivered in October at Gordon-Conwell Seminary in suburban Boston. On 6 July 1974, Trumpeter of God – Reid’s long awaited biography of Knox – was finally off the press. “I found it waiting for me at the university when I came down from the country last Tuesday,” he wrote his editor at Scribner’s. The book was dedicated to “Historiographer of Scotland” J.D. Mackie, who responded from his retirement home in Glasgow: “I think that it looks very good.”22 Others whose opinions he valued were equally positive. His old church history professor Paul Woolley wrote: “Your Knox is great. It is calm, sober and comprehensive and, therefore, all the more impressive. It ought to be the standard history.”23 Allan Farris of Knox College said, “I found this a balanced book. Reid’s own pastoral and theological commitments enable him to appreciate the pastoral problem of Knox and to understand his theological thrust ... one is not left with much doubt about where Reid personally stands on some of Knox’s concerns in theology, polity and liturgy as they have been translated into the present practice of the church.”24 The editor of the Presbyterian Record enthused that “This is the kind of book that Canadian Presbyterians may read with profit and enjoyment during our centennial year.”25 John Kromminga, president of Calvin Seminary, called it “a very worthwhile and usable volume [though] one hesitates to say ‘definitive.’”26 In the Christian Scholar’s Review, former graduate student Russell Bishop expressed appreciation for the book, which not only helped to “counterbalance the negative portrait of Knox, it was also a welcome contribution to the subject.”27 One review that particularly pleased him was that of Princeton Seminary President James I. McCord in the Princeton Seminary Bulletin. Reid, he wrote, “is the latest to attempt a portrait of Knox, and he has done a remarkably good job in setting the man and his work in focus. He has a sure grasp of historical fact and his judgment is wise and balanced. He is convinced that Knox speaks relevantly to our period of cultural change and unrest, and that the social revolution going on in Scotland in his time had remarkable similarities to our own.”28 He concluded: “One is impressed with the wealth of understanding of the social and economic conditions of Scotland that Dr Reid has brought to this study and with his refusal to join the ranks of those who would caricature or exonerate the Scottish reformer. This is a scholarly, well-

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balanced study of a ‘typical hard-headed Lowlander,’ who is also one of Scotland’s greatest sons.” That summer of discontent the press found distraction in Trumpeter of God. The Scotsman, comparing a debunking biography of Luther, stated that “It is a relief to turn to Stanford Reid’s biography of Knox.”29 In the New York Times book review section, Neil Burger, after describing it as “excessively detailed,” said that the author “gives us the facts in unadorned prose and lets the quirks and oddities fall where they may.” He continued: “John Knox’s belief in universal education, in a role for the laity in church affairs, his conviction that governments derive their power from the people, find ready acceptance in the Twentieth Century. Less popular today are his support of a church established by law and his opinion that woman’s place is in the home. Moreover, his uncompromising Bible-based moral and theological views are not universally applauded in these permissive times.” Then he asked: “Is Knox right or wrong in this or that? Mr Reid will help you make up your mind. One thing is certain. It has always been easy to argue with John Knox – but not easy to win the argument.”30 The New York Times felt that the book might have sold better if Reid had developed a sex scandal since fifty-year-old Knox had married Marjory Bowes when she was only seventeen. Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian broadcaster known for his irreverent quips, cited Reid’s book as evidence of a sexy John Knox. Reid passed on Sinclair’s comments with evident relish: “One of the amusing things that has come out recently is that a man by the name of Gordon Sinclair who broadcasts for [radio station] cfrb in Toronto, and who is noted for his atheistic anti-Christian views, gave a review of the book a couple of weeks ago. I did not hear it but apparently he said nothing about the book except that it showed that Knox was a sexy old man, and then he launched into a free swinging attack on Christianity ... as a result quite a number of people have been asking where they can get it! I am fairly well-known in this area and I expect they wanted to know what I had to say about Knox’s sex life. I think they will get a bit of a shock.”31 Academics were more guarded in their appraisal. Eighty-year-old retired Yale professor Roland Bainton, the dean of church historians and author of the classic biography of Luther, was critical: “The author is not so much interested in information as explanation.”32 G.R. Elton, the doyen of sixteenth-century scholars, wrote back in appreciation of his presentation copy: “As I would have expected, Reid has produced just the careful, scholarly, balanced account that was needed, especially after a certain amount of Knox-bashing that has gone on of late.” But Elton perceived a weakness: “I confess that I thought the book less well

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written than well researched.”33 Richard Greaves of Florida State University reviewed the book for Church History, describing it as “the culmination of a lifetime’s study of the Scottish Reformation.”34 He commended it as meriting “the consideration of every Reformation scholar. The portrait that emerges is markedly traditional, not revisionist ... Despite Reid’s claim to objectivity, his study is manifestly sympathetic, though not adulatory. Although he has written a personal work mirroring his own beliefs, scholarship does not suffer.” He observed, however, some “special pleading,” particularly Reid’s attempt to downplay Knox’s description of Cardinal Beaton’s murder, his insistent demands for Mary Stuart’s punishment, and his role in inciting the Perth iconoclastic riot by his sermons beforehand. He saw evidence of haste in the writing of the book. Contrasting Reid and Ridley, Greaves suggested that the two should be read together. “Reid’s portrait, with its greater clarity, will certainly please Knox’s admirers, though no major conversion of his critics appears likely.” Six years later, Greaves came out unequivocally, stating, “This is the best biography of Knox and the proper starting point for all study of him.”35 Reid anxiously watched the sales. Unfortunately Scribner’s had too extensive a book list to give Trumpeter of God the publicity that it required. Their historical book division would, in fact, soon be closed down. Though a nervous Reid had been assured by Goldwin Smith “that compared to others my sales are not doing too badly,”36 by May 1977 he was informed that “unfortunately, we’ve had to remainder Trumpeter of God. The book was not selling enough copies to enable us to keep it in print.”37 By that autumn Marlborough Books, a mail order discount bookstore, had it on sale for $3.98, Reid learned thirdhand. It was a bitter blow. Reid should not really have been surprised – Oxford University Press had done the same with Jasper Ridley’s biography, knocking it down from $9.50 to $1.50, but he took it very hard. After numerous approaches, and some niggling by Scribner’s, Baker Book House bought the rights for a paperback, which duly appeared in February 1982. Shortly before his death, Reid was negotiating with a Texas publisher to come out with a third edition. The emotional stress of getting the book to press strained Stanford Reid, robbing him of his usual resilience. For the first time in his life, health became an issue as he suffered a major setback. True to form, he made light of it. In November 1974 he joked with a friend that he had “decided to imitate ex-president Nixon by having a thrombosis in his left leg.”38 The remedy, as Reid continued in a humorous vein, was rat poison. After three months on anticoagulants (“rat poison”) he was able to resume a full schedule, but he would never completely regain his old strength or vigour. He was, indeed, aging.

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In 1975 Reid scored his greatest coup for the University of Guelph Library. The personal and business correspondence of the family of John Ewen, an eighteenth-century Aberdeen hardware merchant came on the market and, with a grant of $10,000 from the Macdonald-Stewart Foundation, he was able to purchase the entire collection. The collection, known as the Ewen-Grahame Papers, spanned the years 1732 through 1892 and consisted of 12,000 items. Ewen corresponded with a variety of people on topics “from art to politics, and business to lunatic asylums.”39 That same year, again with a grant from the Macdonald-Stewart Foundation, Reid purchased the Jacobite Collection, “undoubtedly one of the finest in the world.”40 It consisted of rare and limited editions of contemporary books and pamphlets of Bonnie Prince Charlie that were both pro- (sympathetic tales and flattering portraits) and anti-English press clippings from 1745 to 1747.The acquisition of a newly discovered set of forty letters from Sir Walter Scott made headlines in the London Times and the Edinburgh Scotsman. Stanford was interviewed at Washago by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and received two phone calls from an Edinburgh journalist. “At the end of the interview the Scot was not too happy about such an important collection leaving his country,” Priscilla wrote in her diary with satisfaction.41 “Quite a victory for Stan,” she added two days later as publicity and excitement over the purchase grew.42 That year was also a time for the Presbyterian Church in Canada and the United Church of Canada to celebrate the formation of the original denomination in 1875. On behalf of the Presbyterian Committee on History, Reid served as editor of a volume of biographical vignettes titled Called to Witness. The book included contributions by both Stanford and Priscilla. The American Society of Church History used the centenary as an opportunity to hold its biennial meeting in Toronto. Reid had been appointed the previous year as chairman of the Arrangements Committee. The Reids played a conspicuous part and Stanford made a memorable impression on those present at the final banquet in his role as master of ceremonies. Stanford Reid was increasingly being honoured as an evangelical “senior statesman.” He was seen as one who had kept the faith in secular academic circles when many with his theological convictions had retreated into a defensive anti-intellectualism. He was invited to Wheaton College to be speaker at its 117th commencement in June 1976. His address, “Facing a Secular World,” threw down the gauntlet to a rising generation of graduates from an institution described as the “Harvard of evangelicalism,” urging them to take bold initiatives. In the “Year of the Evangelical,” as Time magazine described 1976, his was a challenge to be fully involved in changing society. Reid was

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awarded an honorary doctorate of human letters. It was a time of recognition and celebration of his life’s achievements, outside his own narrower religious and national boundaries.43 In 1976 Reid published a compendium that took advantage of a recommendation of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism encouraging celebration of cultural diversity, particularly ethnic traditions other than Canada’s founding races, the English, French, and First Nations. Reid seized the moment and demanded of the Department of State that the Scots – neither English, French, nor First Nations – be so honoured. He applied for, and received, a $5,000 grant. The Canadian Department of State had been cornered into conceding that the Scots were an ethnic minority. The Scottish Tradition in Canada became the first in a series entitled Foundations: A History of Canada’s Peoples. As one of his colleagues noted in a fair appraisal, “I had to give the volume a bad review in the journal Scottish Tradition as it was so uneven, too celebratory, and insufficiently critical. Looking back on it, the book was rushed into print too quickly and there was too much reliance on some second raters who were part of the Guelph Scottish Studies group.”44 But Scots Canadians loved it. As Malcolm Ross of the Dalhousie English department said, “A most welcome book indeed!”45 During 1977, Reid was away for both the winter and autumn semesters. During the winter semester, he used a sabbatical to teach in Philadelphia at Westminster Seminary, offering courses on the “Social and Economic Background of the Reformation” and “Transmission of Calvinism in the Sixteenth Century.” In doing so he strengthened Westminster Seminary’s credentials as an institution offering a Ph.D. in church history. He was back teaching in Guelph in the spring of 1977 and then, owing to the sudden death of Allan Farris, professor of church history, taught at Knox College for the autumn. Here his courses were “The Political and Social Thought of John Calvin” and “History of the Church in Scotland Since 1500.” Retirement was scheduled when University of Guelph professors reached sixty-five. For Stanford Reid this would have been in April of 1978. In some ways he felt ready for retirement, as the years following his resignation as chairman of the history department had not been altogether easy. Starting with the unexpected interruption of his sabbatical that followed his giving up the chairmanship, there had been disappointments and misunderstandings. Margaret Evans, who had been a constituting member of the department in 1965, had succeeded him as chair. She, Reid, and Masters each had a teaching assistant, based on the number of students in their courses. Other professors in

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the department resented this.46 But, besides being the senior members of the department, the three had the largest number of students. Reid’s teaching load between 1970 and 1975 was heavy. His anchor course, History 125, usually had about fifty students enrolled and reached a peak of ninety-eight in the fall of 1975. One of the difficulties the department faced was, of course, financial. No longer were there the unlimited financial resources available for tertiary education as there had been in the early days. To a colleague in South Africa, Reid wrote With universities coming more and more to depend upon governments for financing the politicians are taking control with disastrous results. The Arts faculties are taking a bad beating for they have nothing ‘practical’ to offer. Unfortunately it is the same all over the country. Added to this, with the attack now being made, particularly in Ontario, on graduate work we shall soon have few Canadian trained candidates to take over the rising number of vacancies on the teaching staffs. The result will be a flood of Americans who will in turn bring in more Americans, so that we shall be sold out not only economically, but intellectually and culturally to the American interests.47

To George and Dorothy Kimble he was more frank. In a 1975 New Year’s letter he wrote, “The younger members of the department are very definitely out to get me if they can, even men who have been former graduate students of mine, and whom I brought into the department. Partially as a result of this situation, but primarily because I want to do more writing, I am going on to half time next September, if it all works out.”48 At the end of 1975 he wrote plaintively to a former graduate student that there was “considerable conflict with the younger members looking forward to getting rid of the senior members as soon as possible...”49 By the following year, again to the Kimbles, he complained: “the story you told me in Corsica of the attitude of the younger members of your department, George, has appeared in Guelph. I no longer publicize through the news bulletin what I have been doing as all I get is nasty remarks. When I obtained two grants, one of $10,000 and another for $25,000, for the purchase of large collections of sources for the library, nobody was prepared to say anything about them, and when announced in the departmental meeting there was only a stony silence. So I shall not be sorry to be out. The graduate committee has also laid down the law that I must have no more graduate students.”50 The latter was a bitter blow, and one that was not followed through, though Reid’s freedom in this area was curtailed. Graduate students had been Reid’s great joy and his abiding contribution to historical

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scholarship. They also brought out his warm, personal investment in the lives of individuals, that pastoral concern that had made him an effective minister. He wrote in 1973 to one of them: “I do not know if it is true of other supervisors, but I must confess that I always find that when I am directing a thesis, whether m.a. or Ph.D. that it becomes a very personal matter. Consequently I feel very much involved in the graduate student’s work. I am therefore always very happy when one of my graduate students completes his or her work and ties everything up.”51 After a retirement luncheon put on by his graduate students in the summer of 1978, he reflected that “the most important thing about directing graduate work is that the professor and the student develop a unique relationship which has no equal.”52 Downsizing from an active and rewarding career was not easy for Stanford, and his long retreat into retirement was met with both pathos and bravado. While assuring friends that he would be busier than ever after retirement, by January 1979 he had given up his office for a smaller one in the same building. Because of the death of a colleague, retirement had been delayed a year. He taught two courses in the autumn of 1978 to allow Guelph to continue offering the material. By January 1979, he was no longer teaching undergraduates, but he continued to supervise graduate students, and six or seven were working on theses for him. A retirement party in November 1978 was a fiasco. The chair was thought to have been tipsy, arrived with his mistress (his wife was a close friend of Priscilla’s), and made highly inappropriate and insensitive remarks. One of Reid’s colleagues recalls that the history department felt diminished, and considered that Stanford had not been honoured, presumably the purpose of the evening. Stanford was simply (and sardonically) amused by the event, reporting to a friend who could not be present that “I had humblest apologies from the vice-president, who was there, and from the president, who was not there on account of illness.” That evening may have been an embarrassment, but the negative response contributed to a real demonstration of affection and appreciation that Stanford and Priscilla received subsequently. On Wednesday, 3 October 1979, the department had their own dinner at which there was a “genuine sense of warmth and appreciation expressed by all the members of the department.”53 To H.S. Armstrong, dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, Reid wrote: “Thanks for last Friday’s comments. When it is suddenly stated that the work is being well done, it comes as something of a surprise, but a very pleasant one. Consequently I was rather overcome by all you had to say.”54 Two days later, the University of Guelph, at fall convocation held in

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War Memorial Hall, recognized Stanford Reid’s achievement by appointing him professor emeritus. In the citation, colleague Terry Crowley spoke with feeling and humour: “Madam Chancellor, this amiable scholar-colleague clearly lives vigorously in the present, as an historian he dwells on the past, and as a true Scottish dominie he keeps a watchful eye on the future; in the name of the Senate of the University of Guelph I request you now to recognize his merits and to name William Stanford Reid, Professor Emeritus.”55 Margaret Evans wrote her own tribute to Stanford Reid’s fourteen years in the Department of History at Guelph: “I enjoyed working under you as you built up a fine department, and how much I appreciated your loyal support while I was chairman. Your leadership in the university and community has been invaluable. And Priscilla’s gracious hospitality on so many occasions has made life happier for all of us. It is a shame that such pleasant associations must come to an end!”56 To her tribute he responded graciously in a moment of self-revelation: “I suppose that the thing which has pleased me most about the emeritus status is that it has brought such a warm and appreciative response from the department itself. One often feels that everybody takes one’s work and effort for granted, so when something like this happens one is encouraged and helped to keep going. Naturally Priscilla was also very pleased and happy about the honour.”57

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13 Embattled Mainline Evangelical, 1966–1981 Testing Denominational Limits

The fourteen years of Reid’s active career as an academic at the University of Guelph overlap a fifteen-year period in which dramatic changes took place for the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Reid always had a foot in both camps: the university world with its broad perspectives and secular certainties and the narrower (and narrowing) world of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Reid’s ecclesiastical connection represented a faith community rich in tradition but with a future increasingly challenged. As an academic Reid had the opportunity of witnessing first hand the death of Christendom. Many within the church seemed oblivious to the radical change that was transforming Canadian society. It is obvious to us now, looking back, that the 1960s and 1970s had a revolutionary impact on conventional religious life. No one was more affected by these changes than members of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, a denomination characterized by a conservatism that had helped preserve it in 1925. For Stanford Reid, now in the Presbyterian heartland of southern Ontario, there was a need to establish a new connectedness with a different kind of church life than he had known in Montreal. Throughout his Guelph years he never regained the same kind of leadership he had exercised earlier in the denomination. Partially this was a matter of age: younger members of the group loosely identified as “confessionalists” at first filled some of the vacuum that Reid’s preoccupations at the university had created. But it was these same young men who ultimately, radicalized by exposure to influences from Westminster Seminary, jumped ship and left Reid and a few allies abandoned as the 1980s began.

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One of the reasons why Reid’s voice was more muted was that he never found a faith community – or a pastor like J.S. McBride – as theologically congenial as he had known in Montreal. The Presbytery of Montreal had been home turf to the Reid family for two generations: in the Waterloo Wellington Presbytery he had to make his own way. When Stanford and Priscilla arrived in Guelph they set about finding a church home. There were four Presbyterian congregations in the city at the time, none of them completely compatible with their theological and cultural interests.1 They settled on St Andrew’s, being the oldest of the four, and its minister, Forbes Thomson, though no evangelical, soon became a close and valued friend. At St Andrew’s the Reids quickly acquired a large number of friends. Stanford was elected to the kirk session and provided leadership, attending meetings faithfully when in town. Priscilla was active in the St Andrew’s Women’s Missionary Society. From 1972 to 1986, Stanford Reid provided a Sunday evening lecture series on seven different occasions.2 There were between fifty and sixty in attendance, some of them university students. He would speak the first hour, a coffee break followed, and then there were questions from the audience for the second hour. On anniversary Sunday 1980 Stanford presented to the congregation his book A Century and a Half of Witness, 1828–1978: The Story of St Andrew’s Church. In their final years, Peter Darch, Forbes Thomson’s successor and the Reids’ minister after 1979, was to prove a faithful pastor. The 1966 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, meeting in downtown Toronto at St Andrew’s Church, was a defining moment. There, on a hot and muggy day, commissioners, to the surprise of many by a convincing majority, opened the way for women to be ordained not only to the eldership but also to the ministry of word and sacrament. The vote caught the confessional group within the church off guard. Many registered their dissent but with Deane Johnston as genial moderator, the Assembly appeared open to accepting the change. Reid was out of the country at the time. Though initially opposed to women in leadership, subsequently he softened his position, perhaps under the influence of Priscilla and her wider denominational contacts through the Women’s Missionary Society. Privately he came to regard the question of women’s ordination as peripheral to the faith.3 But he was aware of the sensitivities (and the rhetoric) of those who felt that the matter was of fundamental importance and directly impinged on Biblical authority. Publicly he would not be drawn on the issue. Originally individuals and congregations opposed to the ordination of women to the ruling and teaching eldership were assured of toler-

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ance by the church. The vote had been too narrow, the controversy too intense, to allow otherwise. But – as has happened in all denominations opening themselves to women in leadership – this laissez faire position became untenable. The uneasy truce finally ended in 1981 when, after a bitter floor debate, and as the result of an application for ordination from a Westminster Seminary graduate, it was determined that “this 107th General Assembly hereby passes a Declaratory Act that ... all persons entering the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in Canada after 1980 be required to participate in the ordination of women to the eldership and to the ministry of Word and Sacrament.”4 Change was in the air in the late 1960s, and General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church in Canada were swept up in demands for innovation, if not revolution. The 1969 General Assembly, the first Reid attended as a commissioner after the move to Guelph, had a new format. Gone was the leisurely Wednesday to Wednesday schedule. Debate on the floor, in which Reid had excelled, was now confined to two or three days and provision was made for initial briefing sessions, which he regarded as too often an opportunity for the denominational “brass” to influence susceptible commissioners. That same Assembly adopted the Life and Mission Project, or lamp, Report. Reid reflected on the experience: “The one thing that one did notice throughout the report was the horizontal approach, with great stress laid upon man and the necessity of social involvement.”5 General Assemblies in the early 1970s showed the tempering effect of the new format: “less heat and more light” was one observation. The moderator of the 1971 Assembly was actually a self-declared evangelical. Murdo Nicolson, with (in Reid’s view) both the Isle of Skye and the Free Church of Scotland to his credit, had been a longtime colleague and friend. Reid himself was nominated to be moderator of the 1974 General Assembly as the church came up to its centenary.6 Canada Post recognized the Presbyterian church union of 1875 with commemorative postage stamps. But as the seventies went on, there were signs of increasing tension. The tragic sudden death in 1977 of Allan Farris, whose appointment as Knox College principal the year before seemed to represent significant openness to evangelicals, was a deep disappointment. Throughout the period there was a continuing erosion of members. The loss in these fifteen years of 37,000 members in a small denomination that had peaked at 202,000 in 1965 became a serious concern. The church was now smaller than it had been in 1930, while the country had more than doubled in population. Even more of a bellwether, Sunday school registration fell by half in the same period. The Presbyterian Church in Canada as a mainline church had been pushed to the sideline.

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Presbyterian Comment continued to be Reid’s bully pulpit for addressing the issues of the Presbyterian Church in Canada as he saw them. The magazine, which had been based in Montreal for its first six years, was now to shift to central Ontario. It was not just the Reids’ move to Guelph that triggered this. On 28 June 1966 D.K. Gowans, circulation and subscription manager of the Comment, died of cancer. Reid would miss Gowans, calling his death “a great personal loss to me as we were very close friends and had worked together on various things ever since we were in high school.” He had been a confidant and contemporary, and his death meant that one of Reid’s closest continuing links with Montreal was gone. With Gowans’ death the geographic centre of the Reid circle shifted to Toronto. Enemies might call them Stan’s men; Stanford described them as a “mixed grill.” Several were Montreal clergy friends who had joined the Quebec anglophone exodus to Ontario: Hector MacRury left Côte des Neiges Church for Cooke’s, Toronto; Louis DeGroot had moved from Pointe St Charles in Montreal to the west Toronto suburb of Cooksville; Mariano DiGangi had returned from a brief American sojourn to head up a missionary organization from a Toronto base. Donald MacLeod, a former student of his at McGill who was then in his twenties, came from Nova Scotia in November 1967 to establish Bridlewood Church, Scarborough, Toronto. A few months later, William Campbell arrived in Cambridge after accepting a call to St Andrew’s, Galt. Merrill Reside moved from the Hamilton suburb of Stoney Creek to Willowdale, Toronto, in 1969. Everett Hawkes, a 1946 Westminster graduate, drove to Presbyterian Comment committee meetings from Madoc. There were laymen as well: William Younger, secretary-treasurer of the Steel Company of Canada and an elder in St Enoch, Hamilton, and Judge Mel Moffat of Knox’s, Galt. The remarkable Salmon brothers, farmers from rural Binbrook, also were active in the committee: Charles served as secretary. It was a diverse group and one that spoke well for Reid’s ability to gather interesting men (but no women) of different ages and personalities and shape them into a team. Committee meetings were congenial and relaxed, held either at MacLeod’s home in Toronto or, more frequently, at one of the Reids’ several addresses in Guelph. They became a sort of think tank for whatever was coming up, or current, in the Presbyterian Church and required a response from the confessional wing of the denomination. Debate about whether the Presbyterian Church in Canada was truly a confessional church was raised by the 1966 General Assembly when it sent down for study a new Statement of Faith. When he returned to

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Guelph that summer Reid wrote to William Campbell in Atikokan: “I disagree most heartily with what they have done concerning the ordination of women, but I think much more dangerous is this statement of faith which has been sent down to the Presbyteries for consideration and report by January 1. I am planning to devote a whole issue, the September issue, to it ”7 Joseph McLelland, raised in an immigrant Presbyterian home in Hamilton that was both confessional and fundamentalist, initiated the draft statement. He was riding a wave: the United Presbyterian Church in the United States was about to adopt its own new “Confession of 1967.” Reid’s long-time friend Mariano DiGangi, who had left Canada to succeed Donald Gray Barnhouse at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, warned readers of the Comment about its divisive potential. Applying the test “Does [the Confession of 1967] accurately and carefully summarize and contain what the Bible says? Is it indeed a trustworthy guide to the church in its mission?”8 DiGangi’s answer was an emphatic “No.” When the Confession of 1967 was adopted DiGangi returned to Canada and rejoined the confessionalists. True to his word the September 1966 issue of Presbyterian Comment was devoted to the draft Statement of Faith. Reid editorialized: “Some undoubtedly feel that our church should have a new confession. This might be a good idea, but this statement with its vagueness as to its sources and as to the whole concept of a confession is certainly not the answer. All it will do is confuse people and leave them with the impression that the church really does not know what it believes. And in some cases, of course, they may be right!”9 Reid was heading to Europe, where he would attend the Billy Graham-sponsored Berlin Congress on Evangelism. With his blessing, a hastily called caucus of evangelicals was summoned to meet at the Skyline Hotel, next to the Toronto Airport, on 17 October 1966.10 It was a representative group: the thirty present came from eight synods, and there were eleven laymen. Louis DeGroot,11 one of the Presbyterian Comment group, was chosen to chair the meeting. He was nervous: “We have the precedent of Perry Rockwood and we must bear it in mind. If the formation of an organization leaves us open to the charge of following a divisive course, we could be put out of the church before we could take any effective action. At the moment I am very dubious about the wisdom of forming an organization.”12 DeGroot did his best to temper the discussion and ensure that hot-heads would not prevail. Before Reid left for Europe that autumn, he had written to DiGangi in Philadelphia: “The Evangelicals are even more disorganized and irresponsible than the people in the U[nited] P[resbyterian] C[hurch in the] usa ... These fellows do not seem to have any idea what is facing

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our church at the present time. It is rather interesting that the only people who really seem to have an overall church view are the fellows with either a Dutch or a Westminster background.”13 The Skyline meeting had appointed a standing committee to follow up on an appropriate response to the draft Statement of Faith. William Fitch of Knox Church, with his assistant George Lowe, was left to call a first meeting of the committee. Stanford Reid, named as a member, returned from Europe expressing hope that finally those opposed to confessional revision would organize. He waited, prodded, and complained, but the committee never met. For Reid the draft Statement of Faith raised the matter of confessional integrity. Was the Westminster Confession of Faith still the church’s subordinate standard? What did confessional subscription mean? As he wrote in an editorial in Presbyterian Comment in April 1967, “The rejection of a particular confession of faith, or any part thereof, unless substantiated from the ultimate standard, the Holy Scriptures, involves not only theological problems and questions, but also a serious ethical question. How can a man (sic) having made the vow of acknowledgment of that confession as his subordinate standard, set aside that standard, or any part thereof? This should trouble the conscience of many men in our church in the year 1967.”14 The vigorous reaction of the confessionalists against the draft Statement ensured that it would go down to defeat. The 1967 General Assembly was informed that “The variety of theological views expressed in the returns from Presbyteries ... makes the task of preparing a statement of faith very difficult.”15 At the same time, Reid was fighting on a second front. He refused to be cornered as a Biblical literalist. Having affirmed as part of his ordination vows that the scriptures are “the only infallible rule of faith and practice,” he was unwilling to go further and sign a statement of faith required of members of the Evangelical Theological Society that used the word “inerrant” to describe the contents of the Bible. In October of 1967 he wrote to 1959 Westminster graduate Robert Strimple, a professor at Toronto Bible College and secretary of the society, that the word “inerrant” “is a late Nineteenth and Twentieth Century word that has a specifically scientific meaning ... [that the] cosmology of the Old Testament must be accepted as scientifically correct, which I quite frankly cannot believe ... I believe that the Bible contains what God intended it to contain, and says it in the way that He desired.”16 Reid, like his teacher J. Gresham Machen, was hard to categorize. He was certainly no fundamentalist literalist. He said that his view on inspiration was classic Calvinism, reflecting the first chapter of the Westmin-

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ster Confession of Faith, which described the Bible as “infallible” and nothing more or less. In a meeting held a month later with other evangelical leaders to assess the impact of the 1967 General Assembly Reid expressed his frustration forcibly. He reported to a friend afterwards that I rather blew my top over the lack of support that we were receiving from the evangelicals within the church. [William] Fitch was present and had just given us a long talk on the glories of the Evangelicals within our church when I erupted like a volcano ... I am so fed up with pious do-nothing Christians who talk and criticize but do absolutely nothing else ... we had a long discussion over whether we should organize some sort of Westminster Fellowship within the Presbyterian Church and Bill Fitch opposed it very strongly because he is afraid of being called divisive ... we will have to do something on the more local level and take the risk of being labelled divisive. The outcome may well be a fight within the church. I think, however, that we are going to have to really get this ‘divisive’ business straightened out.17

The issue of whether the Presbyterian Church in Canada was a confessional church then shifted from a creedal statement to creedal subscription. A new set of ordination questions were drafted, and at the 1969 General Assembly they were sent down to presbyteries for approval. Reid cast his vote in favour, much to the surprise of his friends. Everett Bean,18 a 1941 Westminster Seminary graduate and minister of the Sydney, Nova Scotia, church, made inquiries: “Word trickling down to us is that you and one or two others of the Reformed position have expressed approval of the proposed ordination questions. We have not yet seen them of course but shall look forward a little more happily if the foregoing observation is true.”19 Reid quickly responded. You raise the question of the ordination questions. I would hardly say that I approve of them, but they are so vastly better than anything else that has been produced so far that I thought that they could go down to the Presbyteries. I think the preamble to them which specifically states that the Westminster Confession of Faith is the subordinate standard of the church and also the fact that we made a couple of amendments to tie the questions much more definitely to the Confession will close up most of the loopholes. Quite a number of people were rather upset that no specific reference was made to the Bible as ‘the infallible rule of faith and manners,’ but if they are bound to accept the Westminster Confession as the subordinate standard they must accept its position on the Scriptures in the first chapter unless people feel that that is not strong enough.20

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The 1970 General Assembly adopted these new ordination questions. In the Presbyterian Comment, Reid tried to defuse evangelical concern about them. He responded: Many may feel that the change in the questions was not necessary. Others may be indifferent while others believe that this new orientation is of very great importance. As one looks at the new questions it becomes clear that they are more clear-cut and personal in dealing with the matter of the ordinand’s relation to God, and in this one may well feel that there is an advance. Moreover, if one honestly ‘accepts’ the Confession, he is bound to the position regarding the Scriptures formerly expressed ... Consequently the whole problem rests on the honesty and fidelity of those taking the vows. If they do so ‘with mental reservations,’ as some have done in the case of the old questions, nothing can stop them from perjury. If, on the other hand, they take the vows without reservation they cannot but be faithful to the doctrinal position which is represented in the Confession.21

With Reid’s surprising acquiescence in the adoption of new ordination questions, whisperings were going on among younger confessionalists as to whether he was going “soft.” Many of these were recent graduates of Westminster Theological Seminary who saw the Presbyterian Church in Canada as severely compromised. Unlike earlier graduates, their doctrine of the church appeared to be more separatist, some would say Anabaptist or congregational, rather than Calvinist and Reformed. Instead of being content to bring change gradually and locally, these men were much more militant, less able to accommodate differences, and more willing to take on the entire church. One of their issues centred on the word “apostasy.” At Westminster they had been taught about the 1923 Auburn Affirmation, when over a thousand leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had signed a statement calling for “liberty of thought and teaching.” Opponents of the Auburn Affirmation – some of whom went on to establish Westminster Seminary – charged them with having tolerated “apostasy.” “Apostasy” became the justification for the American Presbyterian splits of the 1930s. Once a denomination was labelled “apostate” not only were you free to leave, you could also bring out a group with you without being guilty of schism. But questions then arose. What doctrine or doctrines were essential? Where would the line be drawn? When was an individual guilty of compromising the gospel? Should a minister leave a church, split a congregation, take a group out and reorganize with a different denominational affiliation? It was often a question of ecclesiastical brinkmanship. And Canadian students, away from their country and church, were highly susceptible to caricatures

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by outsiders who knew little of the uniquely Canadian accommodation of nonessential differences. As one Canadian student wrote to Stanford Reid in 1974, “What can happen here at Westminster is that the Canadians will subject the Presbyterian Church in Canada to a merciless trial ‘in absentia’ ... ignorance of the life of our church is, I believe, the root of so much discontent.”22 As early as 1969 the rumblings were beginning to be heard. Ben Short, a 1965 Westminster Seminary graduate, wrote Stanford Reid ominously of “a fifth column within the church, and that the church will go down the drain because of their indeterminedness. Those of us who want to speak out are regarded with suspicion and as rabble rousers.”23 He resigned from the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in Canada on 29 March 1971. Some members of his congregation then formed a church affiliated to a separatist American Presbyterian denomination in nearby Newcastle, where there already was an historic Presbyterian witness. Short later was a graduate student in history at Guelph. The rumblings of discontent grew louder. Clare Martin, a protégé of Ian Rennie’s, had gone to Westminster Seminary with his and Reid’s blessing, graduating in 1971. In the autumn of 1973, as an ordained missionary in Nelson, British Columbia, he wrote Reid an angry denunciation of the denomination. “You have declared the pcc apostate and preaching a doctrine different from that once delivered to the saints,” Reid replied. “But do you have the right to make such a sweeping generalization?” Martin resigned from the denomination on 31 March 1974. Reid reflected soulfully: “I am beginning to feel ... that we shall never accomplish anything effective unless and until we set up a truly Reformed theological seminary in Canada. The USA seminaries, and I include Westminster in this, are so busy fighting their own internal and external battles that they train our people to deal with their problems, not with ours.”24 Increasingly Reid felt under attack by the mounting number of defections of Westminster graduates. Extreme positions were being taken. In January 1974, on a trip to Moncton, he was told that “every cent given to the Presbyterian Church in Canada was money given to the Devil’s work.”25 The husband of the woman making the remark, Thomas Aicken,26 a recent Knox College graduate, would resign from the Bathurst, New Brunswick, congregation and leave the denomination in February 1976, followed the next year by his brother-in-law Howard McPhee, a member of Westminster’s 1973 class. Aicken wrote: “I realize, Dr Reid, that you have done a lot of good work throughout the years for the Presbyterian Church in Canada. I must say, however, that as of late I am deeply disappointed in your failure to

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give the forthright leadership which is now so essential.”27 Reid described that letter as one “unlike any I have ever received before except one from Murray of Sydney, just before he left the Presbyterian Church.”28 Another family grouping that left included long-time friends of Allan Farris from Saskatchewan. The Codlings, two brothers and a cousin, all three graduates of Knox College, found a new denominational home in the Presbyterian Church in America – Douglas29 leaving Miramichi Presbytery in 1977 and brother James30 departing the next year after a brief ministry on a Manitoba aboriginal reservation. Their cousin Donald31 joined them in 1981 following a division in his church in Timmins, Ontario. His father-in-law, Everett Hawkes, Westminster 1947, renounced the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in Canada as he left Bathurst, New Brunswick. One of the loci of discontent was the Presbytery of Miramichi in northern New Brunswick. In an earlier (and happier) time the presbytery had chosen Stanford Reid as its elder representative32 to the 1963 General Assembly. He now found that association a cause of embarrassment: was he identified with the dissatisfaction, had he fomented discontent? The Westminster Seminary separatist impulse seemed to be catching in the Presbyterian Church in Canada. It spread through presbyteries, often capitalizing on discontented ministers experiencing unresponsive congregations. Not just Maritime, rural, or remote congregations were affected. In Calgary, Chalmers Church would divide after 1974 Westminster Seminary graduate Evan Bottomley33 led a group out of the denomination. Paul Walker,34 a 1966 Westminster graduate, resigned on 31 January 1977 from Fairview Church, Vancouver, often described as “the Knox Church of the west” and a bastion of evangelicalism since 1925. In spite of being under constant attack from left and right as men left the denomination, Stanford Reid remained warmly pastoral. He exercised patience under provocation, a quality that did not come easily to him. To one minister about to resign from the Presbyterian Church in Canada he wrote that “we must go carefully ... in order that we may win over people rather than alienate them ... to work with the church training our people in the Reformed position in order that their own spiritual lives may be deepened which will result in a true reformation in our church ... we see that in the early chapters of the book of Acts and I have evidence to prove that it was the roots of the Reformation in France, Scotland and Holland.”35 He would send encouraging letters to those tempted to despair: “You may feel that we have not come very far in thirty years, but I can see a big change ... vastly improved, and I believe largely as a result of the constant prayers and pressures

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of the evangelicals within the church.”36 To someone who wrote “I am very much concerned with the possibility that Christ will shortly declare this church apostate and leave it to the ravages of liberalism,” he replied that “in the light of my ordination vows, I must stay in and fight until I am tossed out, or until the doctrinal standards are changed so that I can no longer accept them.”37 When Stanford Reid went on sabbatical to Westminster in early 1977 he felt he had an opportunity to address the issue of separatism. Students at the seminary were not unaware of the concern that the school was influencing students from mainline denominations against a return to the churches of their birth. During the 1977–78 academic year at Westminster Seminary, a group with the name Semper Reformanda (“always reforming”) held monthly meetings on campus. Their name suggested an unwillingness to stop the Reformation clock. Members of Semper Reformanda were mostly students from mainline, ecumenically connected, denominations. The theme for the year, the doctrine of the church, had pressing urgency as members contemplated ministry in the years ahead. Anglican/Episcopalian Philip Hughes, then a guest professor, started the year with a talk on “Calvin’s Doctrine of the Church.” A couple, both soon to be ordained, shared their sense of call as they anticipated ministry. Semper Reformanda was taking a very independent stance, dispelling the myth that the seminary’s student body was of a single position on ordination. Stanford Reid, as guest professor, spoke to Semper Reformanda on “A Reformational Attitude Toward Schism.” He warned students about the danger of schism and urged what he presented as a Reformational approach, taking the long view and recognizing the reality of brokenness within every denomination. He did not deny that there were limits to an individual’s toleration of heresy, but counselled against the danger of prematurely and unnecessarily splitting a church and the terrible cost of such division. It was a lesson learned from his student days at the seminary. Stanford Reid’s vision of the Presbyterian Church in Canada was being put to the test. He was being challenged on two fronts: in addition to his traditional opponents he was now being attacked on his flank. This new generation of Presbyterian clergy, many trained at Westminster Seminary or influenced by it, could no longer be counted on to follow him in a unified strategy, preserving loyalty to the denomination and prepared to work patiently for change within its structures. Reid asked himself continually: “Should I have encouraged them to study at a school that had such an influence?” The defection of so many promising young

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graduates raised questions about the need for an indigenous and independent theological college that would prepare confessionally Reformed candidates for ministry prepared to work within the system. He lost the other battle, the attempt to keep the colleges of the Presbyterian Church in Canada from “ecumenical entanglements.” In his view, stated over thirty years, it was only in maintaining their independence, and refusing to capitulate to a creedless conformity, would there be any hope of restoring them to what he regarded as their Reformed theological confessional inheritance. By the end of the 1960s, what seemed unthinkable in Canadian Presbyterian theological education a quarter of a century earlier happened quietly and with little opposition. Reid and the Bryden Barthians had campaigned successfully in the 1940s for the church’s theological colleges to remain Presbyterian. Now these same schools, the so-called “war trophies of 1925,” would join newly amalgamated regional clusters. It was a change that Reid anticipated would have long-term implications for the future viability of the Presbyterian Church in Canada and its doctrinal distinctives. In 1968 the General Assembly agreed to bring Presbyterian College Montreal into the McGill Faculty of Divinity. Thus ended a twenty-five year campaign by those who wanted to keep the college both independent and, hopefully, confessionally committed. Full integration would now proceed. Among the reasons given were “the trend for Theological Education to be carried on in the larger context of the university ... participation in the University would not diminish the role of the College in the life of the Church, but would rather increase its opportunity to represent the Church at new levels of education.”38 Reid’s conclusion was that the amalgamation “now limits specific Presbyterian teaching to a few peripheral subjects.” Federation of theological colleges was proceeding rapidly across the country. In 1969 the General Assembly received a proposal that Knox College federate with six other schools in a new Toronto School of Theology. As a commissioner to that Assembly Stanford Reid participated in the debate. He shared the concern of two of the Knox faculty, Allan Farris and Stanley Glen, that the amalgamation would blunt the Reformed content of the theological curriculum.39 Reid was dismissive of the new arrangement: “It would seem that the Presbyterian Church in Canada is in this way gradually surrendering its control over the education of its own ministers to ecumenical bodies of little or no Reformed conviction.”40 The arrangement proceeded on a provisional basis. The next year, in order to make the arrangement permanent, Principal Glen promised the General Assembly that there would be no diminution of Knox College’s theological commitments, and this assurance helped the motion carry that Knox became a permanent member

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of the Toronto School of Theology. It had taken twenty-five years but the merger had finally been consummated. Three years later Principal Stanley Glen had second thoughts about the optimistic assurances he had given the 1970 General Assembly. “Talking to him the other day,” Reid wrote in a letter, “he was telling me how much he disliked the whole Toronto School of Theology project. He sees it as simply an attempt to homogenize theology as the first major step in the direction of church union. He sees it primarily as an ecumenical ploy. He then went on to say that he felt that the evangelicals would react against it. To this I replied that they already are, in the fact that some of the Reformed element are talking of the possibility of setting up an interdenominational Reformed college, because of the situation in our country. He did not seem too surprised and agreed that this might well be a good idea.” And then Reid added, “One other point which I think is important is that I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with Westminster.”41 Reid was now convinced that the only answer was an independent Canadian theological training school that would provide ordinands with a preparation for ministry that was distinctively Reformed and evangelical. In the autumn of 1973, Reid invited representative evangelicals to his club in Toronto to test the waters about setting up a new Canadian theological seminary. In the letter of invitation he explained his rationale: For some time a number of Canadians, particularly members of the Presbyterian Church, have been increasingly disturbed over the theological training which those preparing for the Christian ministry have been receiving in our theological colleges. This sense of disquiet has been greatly increased in recent years, by the gradual absorption of the seminaries of most Protestant denominations by the universities, as one university official put it to me some years ago: ‘in order to facilitate and speed up the process of church union.’ ... Affiliated denominational colleges are now producing, as one member of the Toronto School of Theology acknowledged, nothing but ‘a homogenized theology.’ Over the years the answer to this trend has been for evangelical students to go to the States, to Gordon, to Westminster, to Fuller, to Trinity or to other schools ... Consequently much of their effectiveness has been nullified in their work here, and not infrequently because they have not understood the Canadian situation and have soon returned to the more familiar scene south of the border.42

Among those present at this 12 November 1973 meeting was 1961 Westminster Seminary graduate Victor Adrian, president of Ontario

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Bible College, a 1968 amalgamation of the London School of Bible and Missions and the Toronto Bible College. Other Westminster graduates were Mariano DiGangi and Donald MacLeod. Also present was John Byker, minister of Second Christian Reformed Church in Toronto, later to become a separatist firebrand in his denomination and instrumental in establishing the Mid-America Reformed Seminary in Orange City, Iowa.43 Victor Adrian went on to establish a new seminary, adding a graduate division to Ontario Bible College in 1976 that was named Ontario Theological Seminary. Later renamed Tyndale Theological Seminary, it grew to become the largest postgraduate theological institution in Canada. One specific proposal came from Blake Walker, then on the staff at Knox Church, Toronto. The church had acquired property to the north of their building, a duplex at 644/646 Spadina Avenue. “Might it be possible,” he mused, “to turn that property into something of a resource centre for evangelical and Reformed studies to which students from Knox, Emmanuel [the United Church theological seminary] and Ontario Bible College could come and which at the same time would appeal to the interests of laymen?” “There was considerable discussion of this point,” Stanford Reid (serving as recording secretary as well as host) minuted, “and most of those present seemed favourably disposed to the idea as a preliminary move, which might if the situation in the Presbyterian Church in Canada changed radically, lead to the formation of something more elaborate.”44 Reid was enthusiastic: “I am bursting with ideas on the subject ...” he wrote subsequently to Walker.45 It was noted in the minutes of that meeting that Knox Church was “in a state of some disarray at the moment.” The delicate word “disarray” did not fully describe the turmoil through which the congregation was passing. Throughout the twentieth century, and particularly after 1925, a healthy Knox Church, willing to exercise wider leadership in the denomination, was essential if there was to be cohesion and a dynamic to the evangelical cause. Now, however, the congregation was going through a period of severe strain caused by the inadequacy of its financial resources at the end of a twenty-one-year lease arrangement with the Robert Simpson Company, which had always been counted on to bankroll its pastoral staff.46 Even more significantly, there was conflict between some members of the congregation, particularly the Ketchum trustees, over the leadership style of the senior minister, William Fitch. In the 1960s the five Ketchum trustees were men of stature: John Inglis, head of the Toronto Transit Corporation; Norman L. Mathews,

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one of Canada’s leading labour lawyers (for management); Charles McKechnie, a successful businessman; and George Richardson, a senior accountant with his own firm, had been augmented by Basil Howell when he moved to Toronto and joined the congregation. John Inglis later served as chairman of the Administrative Council of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and Basil Howell worked closely with him as comptroller. One source of the conflict between the trustees and Fitch had been whether the church should buy the duplex next door on the corner, 644 and 646 Spadina Avenue. When 646 Spadina Avenue had come on the market in 1968, Fitch did not favour its purchase. Eventually, trustee George Richardson bought it himself, concerned that the church would lose an opportunity to purchase a strategic property that might never happen again, and presented it to the church anonymously. Subsequently 644 Spadina, which had been the home of the South Africa General Mission for many years, was offered to the church and its purchase was agreed at a congregational meeting in November 1970. At the 1971 annual meeting, friends of the minister brought in a different slate of trustees and the issue was joined. Eventually four of the five trustees departed: Howell and Inglis transferred to Willowdale Church, Richardson to Yorkminster Park Baptist, and McKechnie to Trinity Church, York Mills. The congregation would take some time to recover from the haemorrhaging that took place at the time. Dr Fitch resigned effective 30 September 1972; his departure left the church in a state of division. Knox Church stumbled along without a clear sense of direction, unsure about future goals and lacking a vision for the newly acquired duplex. During the long vacancy following William Fitch’s resignation, and particularly after the arrival of J. Glyn Owen from the United Kingdom as Fitch’s successor, proposals to locate a theological institution in the building were shelved. Owen was unfamiliar with the Canadian church scene and was more inclined toward ecclesiastical separatism. For much of his eleven and a half years at Knox Church he was in failing health. Blake Walker, whose suggestion had sparked such interest in Stanford Reid, left for Sherbrooke, Quebec, in 1978. The initiative for a consistently evangelical and confessional theological seminary as an alternative to the denominational schools came to nothing. Ironically, just as Stanford Reid was being challenged by his erstwhile theological allies, the church as a whole was about to give him increasing recognition. In 1974 he was invited for the first time to provide a continuing education seminar at Presbyterian College Montreal. In 1976 Allan Farris became principal of Knox College. Farris held Reid

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in high regard. Like Presbyterian College’s acting principal Ritchie Bell before him, Farris not only had wide influence and great respect, but also could bring the best out of Reid. It was anticipated that he would see that Reid was given opportunities (even at the age of sixty-three) previously denied him, for which his gifts and experience well qualified him. Reid had already evidenced such willingness in 1972, when Farris proposed to the Knox College faculty that Reid be invited to give the John Knox quatrocentenary lecture. Farris now brought Reid’s name forward for membership on the senate of Knox College. Farris could stand up to Stanford Reid and still maintain cordial relations. In March 1977 Reid, now a member of the Knox College Senate, refused Farris’ request to write a letter of good wishes to retiring Professor David Hay. Hay’s speech at the Knox convocation the previous year had compared evangelicals to the Rechabites in the book of Jeremiah47 – freeloaders and institutional parasites – and Hay was felt to have overstepped the bounds of charity with his cutting and controversial denunciation. Reid wrote acerbically. “If David [Hay]’s views are those of the church in general, then I am afraid that quite a number of us will have to start considering the possibility of withdrawing, a thought which distresses me greatly for I have a great affection for our church in which my family have been active since 1875.”48 He felt that the ecumenical sacramentalism of Hay had done incalculable harm to the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Hay’s thirty-threeyear career teaching theology at the leading training school for Canadian Presbyterian clergy had left ministers bereft of historic Reformed distinctives. Reid would not compromise in his convictions, even for his friend. Farris fired back a strong and considered response.49 “The Reids, as I understand what I have read of them and seen of you, are those who stay in the church and fight for what is clearly a matter of faith and conscience. I think that there is far more theological homogeneity in our church today than there was many years ago when you, for example, used to fight with Frank Beare and Ed White. I also have rejoiced at the fact that you seem to operate so much more in the circle of the church’s life and are looked up to with respect, not only by those of the right wing of the church but by many of us who would find ourselves in the centre position of the theological spectrum within the Presbyterian Church in Canada.” He concluded his letter with a disclaimer: “Personally, I feel that confessional integrity is very important but I grieve when in seeking confessional integrity we sin against Christian charity.” A year and a half later Allan Farris died after a second heart attack. On hearing the news of Farris’ death, Reid wrote Keith Clifford in

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Vancouver: “The death of Allan was a great shock.” It was indeed for the entire church: to this day speculation abounds as to what difference his irenic and compassionate leadership, his ability to hold the respect of all the parts of the church, could have made to the future of Presbyterianism in Canada. His departure also left a vacuum in Knox College’s church history department. Reid went on in his letter to explain: “three days after he died I received a call from Charlie Hay asking me to forget the course on the history of preaching which I was going to do, and calling for two courses in church history. Fortunately I am on half time here at Guelph, so I can work it in, but my easy-going expectations for the coming fall have rather disappeared.”50 Reid was nominated for the church history chair at Knox College by several presbyteries. Other nominees were William Klempa and Ian Rennie of Regent College. Instead, following nomination by the college, the position went to Calvin Pater, who had no previous experience with the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Pater’s appointment was narrowly confirmed by the 1978 General Assembly. Reid wrote one of his former tmr elders, then resident in Vancouver: Klempa ... Ian Rennie ... then there was myself, who, they all admitted, had by far the best credentials, but because I shall be 65 this September, I would have about five years to go, and that they claimed was not enough! I think, however, that the real cause or causes were first of all my own theological position. Secondly, I taught two courses there last fall on very short notice and apparently, from what I gathered from the students, gained quite a reputation for lecturing, which may not have gone over too well when coupled with my Calvinism ... I am not particularly hurt by it, as it is the usual treatment I have had from the church over the past thirty-five years. I am called in on an emergency or a crisis, but anything permanent is out. However, I believe that the Lord guides so he knows best and may be keeping me free to do other things such as set up a truly Reformed theological college in Canada upon which some are working at the moment.51

Reid spoke too soon about the church’s treatment of him. On 9 May 1979 in the Church of St Andrew and St Paul in Montreal, Stanford Reid received an honorary degree from Presbyterian College, Montreal, the school he had left so dramatically in 1934. “Your letter inviting me to accept the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa, came to me as something of a surprise,” he wrote Principal William Klempa. “But I am replying immediately to inform you that I shall be glad to accept this honour. In a sense I feel that it is somewhat of a family affair as both my father W.D. Reid and my uncle A.S. Reid received their doctorates from Presbyterian College, and my father-in-law, H.S.

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Lee, was also a graduate of the institution.”52 To his erstwhile sparring partner, Joseph McLelland, he noted whimsically: “You are by now recognizing my true and golden worth.”53 Stanford Reid’s sense of humour could be counted on to rescue him from self-pity or selfabsorption. In presenting him for the degree, McLelland spoke of Reid’s “lifelong devotion to both sound scholarship and responsible churchmanship. Those like myself who have been his university colleagues and fellow Presbyters can testify to his notable performance as a worthy debating partner, an outspoken but fair critic, and one of those theologians whose disagreement with majority opinions are always to be taken most seriously.” It was a gracious, timely and appropriate tribute to “a long and distinguished career.”54 Meanwhile the door was effectively closing on any more Westminster Seminary graduates serving the Canadian Presbyterian church. The 1979 General Assembly received a recommendation making it virtually impossible for them to enter the ministry of the denomination. “Candidates for the ministry,” it declared, “who are graduates of North American Theological Colleges which are not accredited by the Association of Theological Schools in the u.s.a. and Canada will normally be required to take the full three year course in one of our theological colleges.”55 The proposal was referred to presbyteries for comment. Westminster Seminary was the school most obviously affected. Although no one could argue with its academic excellence, the seminary had refused, as a matter of principle, to be accredited by the American Association of Theological Schools (ats or aats). That accrediting agency, Westminster Seminary insisted, was tainted because of links between it and the ecumenical National Council of Churches. A fierce debate ensued in the Presbyterian Record during the first three months of 1980. In January Stanford Reid roundly condemned the recommendation in an opening salvo entitled “To Stand on Our Own Two Feet.” In the next issue, Farris’ successor as Knox College principal, Charles Hay, responded in support of exclusion while conceding that while academically Westminster maintained a high standard. “I am aware of only one Seminary in the u.s.a. not accredited by a.t.s. that might just come up to a.t.s. standards.” In the March issue, along with comments from Joseph McLelland, Reid had the last word. As the debate went on, a second issue, again focusing on a Westminster Seminary student, this time Daniel MacDougall Jr, was gaining momentum. Immediately prior to graduation in Philadelphia in May 1979, MacDougall had been interviewed in Toronto by the Board of Education. He had already been appointed by the Board of World Mis-

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sion to St Andrew’s Church, Newton, Surrey, British Columbia. Daniel met his family with surprising news when they came to see him receive his diploma. His request for ordination had been turned down by the board because of his views on the ordination of women. His father noted that day in his diary that Dan told him that he had stated to the board that he was “willing to cooperate with all people in the church but as a matter of conscience he could not participate in the ordination of women.”56 At a meeting in September 1979 the presbytery of East Toronto turned down Bridlewood Church’s request for Daniel MacDougall Jr’s ordination by a vote of fifty to forty-seven. The case was then appealed to the synod of Toronto and Kingston, meeting the following month in Huntsville, Ontario, and again denied. On appeal, the 1980 General Assembly received a report from a Special Committee.57 It affirmed that ordination was “an essential aspect of the Gospel,” and “the ordination of women is a part of the doctrine of the Church which every minister is required to confess.” Daniel MacDougall Jr would be ordained, but there would be no further concessions to those who felt that they could not concur with the ordination of women. Ironically, the recommendation demanding that graduates of nonaccredited seminaries redo their entire theological education and the Daniel MacDougall case came just as Stanford Reid was finding it more and more difficult to recommend Westminster Seminary. He disagreed with Westminster’s refusal to join the American Association of Theological Schools. The agency to him was merely an accrediting body. He shared the revulsion caused by the havoc some Westminster graduates were creating in congregations and communities. But more than any of these issues, it was Reid’s perception that Professor Norman Shepherd was seriously compromising Westminster Seminary’s theological position that strengthened his resolve to do something about it. Reid’s involvement with that controversy will be examined in detail in chapter 15. Stanford Reid, at the end of his active life, was now seeing the eclipse of the confessionalism for which he had been a persistent and consistent advocate for forty years. Was there a future for confessionalists of Stanford Reid’s ilk in a church now demanding total uniformity about the propriety of, and Biblical warrant for, the ordination of women? Some evangelical churches continued to decline to ordain women to the ruling eldership. Congregations such as Knox, Toronto, could remain in defiance of the denomination because of their independence and financial strength,58 but other churches did not have that option. Was there a future for evangelicals – confessional and non-confessional

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– within the Presbyterian Church in Canada? Indeed, was there a future for the denomination at all, given the depressing annual statistical reports? As early as 1977 Reid and some of his friends sent out a questionnaire to those Presbyterians who were vexed about the denomination’s membership decline and had “a concern that our church should experience a spiritual renewal and reformation in accord with our Presbyterian doctrine and practice.” By that autumn a steering committee was set up, chaired by Ed McKinlay of Bridlewood Church. On 3 June 1978, at Knox Church, Dundas, “The Reformation Fellowship of Canadian Presbyterians” was constituted. Its purpose as laid out in its constitution was “to promote the knowledge and appreciation of the Reformed heritage within the membership of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.” Specifically, “The aim ... is a spiritual renewal and revival of our church which will emphasize our distinctive Reformed heritage.” It would seek to do this in two ways: prayer and study. It also encouraged study of “the historical Reformed teachings which we as Presbyterians believe to be the truest exposition of biblical thought and the study of our church’s present condition and policies.” Reid was elected the first president of the new organization, and Robert Bernhardt, a 1964 Westminster graduate and a denominational loyalist, was chosen as volunteer general secretary. Various meetings were scheduled. Much to Stanford Reid’s disappointment the Reformation Fellowship never really caught fire. Partly the difficulty was leadership. By early 1980 Bernhardt reported to the executive that “for reasons of the time demanded by the position I am unable to continue.”59 But there was another, perhaps more basic, concern. Stanford Reid was ambivalent about the question of women’s ordination and did not want the Reformation Fellowship to get involved in an issue for which he felt that there was no single Biblical position. “I do not wish the Reformation Fellowship to become a one issue organization,” he responded to Bernhardt’s expression of concern. He continued: “with regard to the MacDougall case, I agree with you completely.”60 As he wrote to Everett Bean in the summer of 1980, “To me the whole issue is uncertain. I do not feel that because of this the church should be split.”61 Organizationally, Stanford Reid’s retirement and frequent trips out of the country – to Australia and Florida – meant that others were called upon to coordinate activities as he might have done when younger. A Reformation Fellowship church growth conference, to be held in Knox College on 13 May 1980 and at which Reid and Dennis Oliver were to speak, was called off because of insufficient response, owing to the lateness of the publicity. Reid was nervous about rumbles

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he heard from reactionary radicals following the 1980 General Assembly: “I do not know what they have decided but I hope that they will not do anything rash.”62 A meeting called by Glyn Owen and Donald MacLeod for 15 September at Knox Church brought together individuals prepared to confront directly the implications for evangelicals by the Daniel MacDougall Jr case. Subsequently, over the next eighteen months, the Renewal Fellowship Within The Presbyterian Church in Canada was set up by an ad hoc committee and formally constituted on 8 May 1982 in Willowdale Church, Toronto. It replaced the Reformation Fellowship and the Conference of Concern, which had been directed by Donald Campbell, as the organization bringing together confessional and evangelical Canadian Presbyterians (and even some charismatics). No longer focusing on women’s ordination, it went on to broader concerns of renewal. It continues to this day. Stanford Reid was not included in the Renewal Fellowship, either on its board or the Council of Reference. It was painful for him to watch the initiative being taken by others – painful but inevitable. He wrote his long-time friend Mariano DiGangi in early 1981: “From what I have been able to gather Don MacLeod wants to run a show completely separate from either the Reformation Fellowship or Campbell’s Conference of Concern. This I think would be a pity and counter-productive. Cannot something be done to bring the Ad Hoc committee and the [Reformation] Fellowship together? I have seen so many evangelical efforts go down the drain because of the fact that they could not keep together in the battle.”63 But he knew that the time had come for him to withdraw gracefully. To Donald Campbell he conceded: “I have been fighting the battles since 1941 and I feel that some of the younger men should be given a chance to do something.”64 Stanford Reid’s passion for revival and renewal within the Presbyterian Church in Canada was being carried on by a new organization and fresh, and younger, leadership. Many of them were his students, individuals he had mentored. So his vision endured. Stanford Reid’s final contribution to the Presbyterian Church in Canada occurred in 1984, when he was asked to critique Living Faith before it was approved by that year’s General Assembly as “an acceptable statement [of faith] and as such useful in both worship and study.” Though a strong confessionalist, Reid had never opposed updating the language of the church’s credo. “We did not and do not object to a new confession in 20th century terms, but we do object to a confession that is so vague that anyone, whatever his beliefs, or even if he had none could enter our ministry.”65 Unlike the earlier aborted statement of 1966, Reid could now be positive: “I think that generally speaking it is

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as good, if not better than most. I did quite a critique of it before it was finally accepted and I was backed by a number of evangelicals on the committee which prepared it.”66 In 1999 Living Faith was elevated to a subordinate standard of the church. For almost a half century Reid had made his mark on the Canadian Presbyterian scene. The denomination was stronger for his outspokenness, his willingness to respond to any and all of its calls for his leadership, his intense and deeply emotional commitment to its life and witness. The value of that contribution had been enhanced by links beyond his own communion. From his worldwide Reformed contacts he had brought to the Presbyterian Church in Canada the depth of a wider perspective. As a Calvin scholar of international repute he spent a lifetime as both chronicler and interpreter of the Reformer. It is to that broader canvas that we now turn.

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14 Interpreting Calvin Among Calvinists, 1953–1987 Who Speaks for John Calvin?

Throughout his life, Stanford Reid established himself as both a Calvin scholar and a Calvinist He recounted in his contribution to John Calvin: His Influence in the Christian World that the entire Reid family, and indeed the whole Quebec Scots émigré community of Leeds in which they were nurtured, owed everything to the legacy of John Calvin and “the Calvinist drive to obtain an education.”1 At Westminster Seminary, a Calvinist bastion, he took an elective in Calvin’s theology and was introduced to the way in which Cornelius Van Til related Calvinism, via the Dutch school of Abraham Kuyper and his colleagues at the Free University of Amsterdam. He found that the international networking with Calvinists, in organizations such as the International Association for Reformed Faith and Action (iarfa) and the Reformed Ecumenical Synod (res), brought many highly congenial friendships. For over forty years, he continued interpreting Calvin’s thought through writing, teaching, and at Calvin conferences right up to the 1986 International Montreal Calvin Symposium of McGill University and Presbyterian College. That these two institutions would sponsor such a gathering is in itself an indication of how much more seriously Calvin was taken by the end of Reid’s life, in contrast to the neglect, if not ridicule accorded to the reformer earlier in the century. “Four hundred years ago this year,” Reid wrote at the quatrocentenary anniversary of Calvin’s death in 1964, “a frail and emaciated individual, at the age of fifty-five, passed away in a small room in Geneva.” John Calvin, he continued, “has a claim on our remembrance since he holds the position of being the father ‘in the faith’ of all those who

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claim to be Reformed or Presbyterian in their beliefs. We should, therefore, acknowledge our debt to him.” So he reminded readers, “He was our teacher. This does not mean that we believe him to have been divinely inspired as were the apostles, nor do we hold that everything he did was perfect. On the other hand we do believe that, as no man before him and very since, he set forth by God’s grace” that system of doctrine that most fully sets forth the scriptures.2 John Calvin always provided Reid with fresh material for every issue that he was currently exploring, giving him unfailing stimulation. He defended Calvin from what he regarded as the calumny of the Weber/Tawney school over their contention that Calvin was the author of capitalism. He sought from Calvin a definition of true ecumenicity, founded on theological agreement rather than expedient compromise. During his involvement with the controversy over the doctrine of justification by faith, Reid threw down the gauntlet in a 1980 article in the Westminster Theological Journal by claiming that his was the true Calvinist interpretation. All the time he was drawing practical lessons from Calvin’s example as a pastoral theologian and as a missionary strategist. Even Calvin’s sense of humour was advanced to support Reid’s own wry wit. He wrote in the first issue of Presbyterian Comment: “It might be well if our ministers began instructing our people once again in Calvin’s doctrines, and if our people began reading his works in order that they might be built up in their faith in these trying days.”3 Particularly vexing was Max Weber’s simplistic claim, according to Reid, “that Calvinism, with its doctrines of predestination, assurance and vocation produced a worldly asceticism which has resulted in the rise of capitalism” and “has thus been closely linked with many of the worst aspects of modern western society.”4 Toward the end of Reid’s career, in articles in Themelios in 19835 and two years later in the Reformed Theological Review,6 as well as a 1982 review in the Sixteenth Century Journal of Gordon Marshall’s Presbyteries and Profits,7 he set about to rescue Calvin from this accusation. Max Weber “did not really make a thorough study of Calvin.” Nor did he understand Calvin’s theology, particularly when he mistakenly maintained “that the doctrine of predestination is central to Calvin’s whole system.”To Calvin, prosperity was no indication of being either among the elect or of an individual’s holiness. Instead, Calvin warned frequently against the seduction of riches, and emphasized that the rich have a responsibility for the poor. Max Weber is providing “one explanation for a very complex development.” Reid concluded that Calvin was “a critic and restricter of capitalism, that all might be done to the glory of God.”8

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One legacy of church union in 1925 was Stanford Reid’s preoccupation with the nature of true ecumenicity. At the height of the Church of Christ in China controversy he wrote an article for the Westminster Theological Journal on “The Ecumenism of John Calvin.”9 “If Calvin were able to speak to us at the present time, he might admonish us not to blame the Reformers for the church’s present divisions. He would probably tell us that the Reformers laid a good foundation. They manifested the true unity of the church in their common faith and loyalty to Christ as Saviour and King.” He then went on to state that the only way that unity among Christians could come about was through a return to “this basic principle of unity” which for Calvin was “faith in Jesus Christ and all that such faith implies.” It was 1948, and the World Council of Churches was being set up in Amsterdam. He cautioned: “Conferences on church union, on church government and church worship, will all be ineffective unless there is first real unity of believers. Such a unity will result in unity of will and desire, enabling matters of external uniformity to take care of themselves. This is Calvin’s message to Christ’s church today.”10 In his continuing debate with David Hay, Reid wrestled with the significance of tradition to the Christian. The final distillation of his views on the subject was provided in a twenty-two-page booklet published by the British-based Sovereign Grace Union titled Calvin and Tradition. “In the Reformation movement [Calvin] above all others, insisted upon the sole and final authority of the Bible in all matters of Christian faith and practice.”11 Reid continued: “the Church must always remain subordinate to the Scriptures, for while the biblical writers were the inspired scribes of God, their successors have the responsibility of setting forth only that which they taught. Thus the Church has the authority neither to change nor add to, but only to proclaim and expound what God has revealed through the apostles.”12 But this view of scripture was not bibliolatrous: the Holy Spirit “rules over the Church vivifying, strengthening, and guiding it ... He does so in and by the Scriptures. This means, as far as Calvin is concerned, that Word and Church are indissolubly linked, and the power which holds them together is none other than the Spirit of God Himself. For the Church to be truly the Church it must live by the life of the Spirit who comes to it openly and effectively through the Word.”13 For Reid, Calvin’s doctrine of justification by faith was pivotal to the reformer’s whole system of doctrine. In his 1980 Westminster Theological Journal article on the subject he cited Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: “God deigns to receive the sinner with his free goodness, but finds nothing worthy in the sinner. He, therefore, must find the reason for his move toward the sinner within himself, and so

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of his own goodness touches the sinner who responds by despairing of his own righteousness, and placing his dependence on the mercy of God alone.”14 In this Calvin agreed with Luther, but pointedly Reid went on: “Since Calvin’s day there have been various attempts even by those who have claimed to be Calvin’s followers and spiritual heirs, to change this doctrine with an introduction of a legalism, and a claim that works must go along with faith as an instrument or basis of justification. Calvin’s position, however, is only too clear, as the author hopes has been shown, in this article.”15 Strong words: there could be no doubt to whom he was referring as having misrepresented Calvin, nor who was the legalist. Calvin had spoken, as Reid interpreted him, and he felt he had been vindicated. Calvin’s view of justification by faith contradicted, in Reid’s view, the usual caricature of him as a humourless crank, obsessed by predestination. In “Every Reformer in His Humour,”16 he maintained that Calvin’s understanding of the doctrine was the source of “joy and freedom even under adversity.” Calvin was no dour killjoy: “nor was it ever forbidden to laugh, or to be full, or to add new to old and hereditary possessions, or to be delighted with music or to drink wine.”17 Anyone who was a contemporary of Rabelais at the university and was familiar with his writings, even though Calvin condemned them as pornographic,18 could not have been without a sense of humour. “Calvin’s training as a humanist would turn his humour in the direction of the classical humorists and satirists rather than in the direction of Luther’s or Knox’s broader jokes and more rambunctious laughter.” The idea of John Calvin as a humourist was too much for an unsympathetic editor, who scrawled a rejection in the margin of the article. Calvin was also a sure guide in the renewal and revival of the church. Reid always regarded the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century as a rediscovery of Biblical Christianity and thus a renewal of the faith. Such a renewal was needed in our own time, so he sought pointers from Calvin as to how this could be achieved. One emphasis of Calvin that needed restatement was his theology of pastoral leadership. In a late 1982 article in the Reformed Theological Review entitled “John Calvin, Pastoral Theologian,” Reid summarized his own lifelong passion for revival: “one of the great needs of the Reformed church now is a return to Calvin’s theology of preaching, individual counselling and pastoral supervision and teaching if the Reformed churches would again wield the influence which they have in the past.”19 Reid, however, never regarded Calvinism as a closed canon, nor should Calvinists be locked into a blind and mindless adherence to the

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memory of the sixteenth-century reformer. In a review of John McNeill’s classic History and Character of Calvinism he wrote appreciatively that the book was “a continual reminder to those who do truly still hold to the Calvinistic position, that their position is not static.” Instead, “they must build on his work, to extend and apply his principles more fully and more completely to all spheres of human thought and action. Too often Calvinists are inclined to become mere traditionalists. This cannot be, for Calvinism, based upon God’s Word, is dynamic. Therefore, we have the responsibility of repeatedly and continually assessing our own position under the judgment of the Scriptures and of applying it to the whole of life. This is the true spirit of Calvinism.”20 John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World was planned as a tribute to Paul Woolley on his seventy-fifth birthday in 1977 and was to appear in time for the jubilee of Westminster Seminary two years later. With all the delays in securing contributions, there was some doubt as to whether the festschrift would appear before Woolley died.21 It was finally published by Zondervan in 1982. Gerard Terpstra, one of their editors, had put a bold face on the delay, saying that it was “coming out at a significant time when there is a resurgence of interest in Calvin and Calvinism.”22 Reid sought to produce a book that would be more popular and generally useful than most books of that genre.23 As with most such collections, the book is uneven in quality. Reid himself contributed two chapters: one on the transmission of Calvinism in the sixteenth century, the other on Calvin’s influence in Canada. The best submission in the book is that of George Marsden on America’s socalled Christian roots, in which Marsden puts to rest a lot of the wishful thinking about Puritan New England being a Calvinist nirvana. Marsden was very supportive of the project: “I like very much the idea of a well-defined theme such as this for a festschrift.”24 Another useful chapter was contributed by Philip Hughes on “Calvin and the Church of England.” Of all the contributions in the book the most controversial turned out to be the chapter on Calvin and Puritanism. The subject had been assigned by Reid to R.T. Kendall, a decision he would later regret. Kendall, a former southern Baptist preacher, came to Westminster Chapel, London, after Glyn Owen went to Knox Church, Toronto. Kendall had developed an idiosyncratic interpretation of the discontinuity between the theology of John Calvin and the 1643 drafters of the Westminster standards. The system of doctrine of the latter he attributed to Theodore Beza, not John Calvin, with William Perkins as conduit. Reid was unsure what to do about “The Puritan

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Modification of Calvin’s Theology,” as he had already taken issue with Kendall when his Oxford D.Phil. thesis, published as Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649, had first appeared.25 The chapter, along with several other rather thin ones, limited the book’s usefulness and demonstrated that the interpretation of John Calvin could still generate considerable controversy. As John Fitzmier of Princeton University wrote in his review, “One can imagine the odium Kendall has raised with his contention that adherents of the Westminster Confession ought properly to enshrine Beza as their progenitor, and relegate John Calvin to the status of a lesser divine such as Martin Luther or Ulrich Zwingli.”26 Reid not only was a Calvinist; he also enjoyed the company of others who called themselves Calvinists. He was involved in a circle of friendships, organizations, conferences, and committees that brought together those who looked to Calvin as their spiritual parent. In his early days, this group was a small and ridiculed minority. After the war it gained stature and cohesion. It reached its creative ascendency in the 1960s and early ’70s. It finally fissured during the 1980s. One of the leaders in the Calvinist renaissance was Evan Runner whose time at Westminster Seminary overlapped with Stanford Reid, though they were never close friends.27 Runner came to Westminster in the autumn of 1936 at the age of twenty. He had been steeped in fundamentalism in a way that made the cultural baggage that Stanford Reid brought to the seminary seem very light by comparison. He was, to quote one source, “an American of the Americans, a Philadelphia Old School Presbyterian raised with revivals, dispensationalism, and Keswick holiness on the side, and a Wheaton College education to round them off.”28 As with Reid, Cornelius Van Til made a deep impression on the young philosopher. Runner graduated from Westminster Seminary in 1939, a year after Reid, and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. He gave up a Harvard Divinity School doctorate for studies at the Free University of Amsterdam, receiving his Ph.D. there in 1951. For the next thirty years, he taught at Calvin College, the flagship tertiary educational institution of the Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At Amsterdam, Runner had studied under Herman Dooyeweerd, professor of law. Dooyeweerd’s “sphere sovereignty” sought to provide a purely Biblical neo-Calvinist philosophy. There were three means of revelation. The first two were givens among Calvinists: the incarnate word in Jesus Christ and the inscripturated word, the Bible. Dooyeweerd added a third, which he called Law-Word. The idea owed much to the concept of common grace. Law-Word provided “creation ordi-

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nances” or “norms” for every sphere of life. This third means of revelation could short-circuit any problems created by a blinkered view of Biblical inspiration (problems caused by higher, source, or form criticism). He also avoided the difficult issue of ecclesiastical deadness and hypocrisy. Indeed, one could say that Biblical authority and the doctrine of the church were not that important to Dooyeweerd. He was out to change society, not merge with it. Christ was against the culture of the day and it was, in the famous words of Abraham Kuyper, the duty of every Christian to plant the flag of Christ the King on all aspects of human experience. Stanford Reid was initially enthusiastic about Dooyeweerd. He included a favourable reference to him in the second edition of his intellectual history syllabus. He was one of Dooyeweerd’s sponsors when he came to Canada for the first time during two trips to North America in 1958 and 1959. He would contribute an article on “Calvinism in Sixteenth Century Historiography” for the 1965 Dooyeweerd festschrift, and explained to one person that “I am Van Til oriented, although at the same time I have learned a good deal from Herman’s thinking.”29 In the summer of 1970, Reid wrote a friend: “We are looking forward to having Herman Dooyeweerd with us for a few days next week. A number of my graduate students are anxious to meet him so we are planning a rather informal get-together here and will include some of the local Dutchmen.”30 However, by the mid–1960s Reid became convinced that Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, as far as the actual work of an historian was concerned, was completely irrelevant. In a review he challenged a writer who said that “Herman Dooyeweerd is one of the few Christian thinkers to investigate the philosophy of history on a level germane to practising historians.”31 Reid wrote that it “reminded me of the time one of my students asked Dooyeweerd how he could relate his study of the First Anglo-Dutch War to Dooyeweerd’s philosophy of history. Dooyeweerd replied that he could not, for he did not know the ultimate meaning of that war.” Reid quipped that “a middle way between Dooyeweerd and Henry Ford is the answer.” When Evan Runner arrived at Calvin College, he taught Herman Dooyeweerd’s philosophy with all the zeal of a new convert. He set up an extracurricular organization called the Groen van Prinsterer Club.32 The club’s rousing sessions began with the singing of “A Mighty Fortress” and then called students to active combat with all societal institutions, claiming the world for Christ the King and providing alternative structures exclusively Christian. Gone was the easy accommodation with contemporary culture. Runner, following Dooyeweerd’s sphere sovereignty, suggested the Dutch model familiar to many of his

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students. This was the “antithetical” approach of Van Til with a vengeance. It inflamed the hearts and loyalties of many students at Calvin College, most of them from families who had recently immigrated from Holland and almost all Canadian.33 Two hundred thousand immigrants from the Netherlands came to Canada between 1947 and 1952. Most of the émigrés who were Protestant found a home in the Christian Reformed Church.34 That North American denomination greatly augmented its Canadian constituency and experienced explosive growth. It was Stanford Reid who first drew the attention of Canadian Presbyterians to this phenomenon, welcoming them to the Canadian Reformed community. As a commissioner to the 1948 Presbyterian General Assembly, he stood up in Knox Church, Toronto, and (seconded by 1942 Westminster graduate John Botting, who came from that denomination and would soon return to it) moved fraternal greetings to the Christian Reformed Church. His motion added “that we assure them that we shall be glad to serve any of their people coming to this country and who have no congregation of their own people.”35 By 1962, to counter proposals for Presbyterian union with Anglicans and the United Church, he wrote: “There are churches in our country who agree with the official confessional position which we hold, and it would seem only Christian that we should enter into negotiations with them in the hope of bringing about a true union. Such a union would strengthen throughout Canada the Reformed witness which we profess to believe is the closest to Scriptural teaching yet set forth. Here is the first step which we should take toward a union which will result in strengthening and expanding our Reformed testimony not only in this land, but throughout the world.”36 Reid was not opposed to ecumenical dialogue but maintained that there should be confessional unity first. He observed such unity between the Presbyterian Church in Canada (at least on paper) and the Christian Reformed denomination. Nothing, however, came of his proposal. It was primarily Canadian students at Calvin College who discovered in the Groen Club “their refuge amid American smugness for twentyfive years.”37 These new Canadians came from a country where they were accustomed to Christian organizations parallel to secular ones, as modelled by former Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper and his Christian “Anti-Revolutionary” political party. With the antithetical philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd38 ready-made for such a task, Runner now set about to challenge his Canadian acolytes to bring all of their enthusiasm and gifts to establish similar systems in Canada. Critics have claimed that this movement has siphoned off from the

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public square some of the most articulate and committed Christians in Canada, who, had they leavened existing non-Christian societal organizations, would not only have been salt and light there but also might have helped to stem the rising tide of secularism in the country. This was a frequently expressed concern of Reid’s. Stanford Reid soon found himself a bridge between the new Dutch immigrant Christian Reformed community and the Presbyterian Church in Canada. As a graduate of Westminster Seminary, his orthodoxy was unassailable. As an historian with Reformed credentials, he was able to contextualize the Canadian experience to those not familiar with its roots and heritage. Typical of such opportunities was the Third Calvinistic Rally in Calgary on 11 November 1955. Fourteen hundred people – mostly recent Christian Reformed arrivals from Holland – packed Grace Presbyterian Church, Calgary. “True Christian Seeks No Scalps”39 was the banner headline in The Albertan the day after Reid’s speech. Speaking on the topic “Marketplace Christianity” (long before that expression was popular), the newspaper reported that Reid “refuted the old idea that true holiness remained aloof. A true Christian should mingle with the crooked and bewildered of ‘the marketplace’ in the world to ‘give leadership to the blind and lay restraint on the wicked.’”40 Winning people to Christianity was a question of establishing confidence: “Bludgeoning them to accept your ideal ... does the faith more harm than good.” Van Til and Runner would have approved. There were many such invitations. Stanford Reid spoke to Young Calvinist rallies, Christian farm organizations, and Christian trade unions. He was highly in demand both as an entertaining after-dinner speaker and as a preacher (he was thoroughly adaptable) in that theologically discriminating and intellectually challenging circle. To the end of his life, he would be asked to preach in Christian Reformed churches as frequently as he was in Presbyterian congregations. And in 1972 he received a high accolade when he was invited to give the graduation address at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids. Among the other organizations being set up in the 1950s in Canada such as Christian schools, a Christian farmers’ association, Christian trade unions, Evan Runner’s great vision was the establishment of an organization committed to Christian scholarship. This was to initiate a Christian post-secondary institution adhering to the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd and embodying his unique cultural insights. The Association for Reformed Scientific Studies was set up in 1956 by a Toronto-based group committed “to discuss the possibilities for Christian higher education. Their dream of founding a Christian university in Canada was nourished and given shape under the leadership

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of Dr Evan Runner, a professor of philosophy at Calvin College.”41 In 1958 and 1959 Herman Dooyeweerd made two visits to North America, his first time across the Atlantic. Stanford Reid was both host and sponsor when he came to Canada. In 1959, in collaboration with Herman Dooyeweerd’s brother-in-law Theodoor Vollenhoven, Evan Runner wrote an educational creed. It stated unequivocally that “all scholarship pursued in faithful obedience to the divine mandate will heed the normative direction of God’s Word, will acknowledge His Law to which all creation in all its spheres is subject, and will bow before Christ’s Kingship over all scientific work.”42 The Association for Reformed Scientific Studies was now ready to convene at the Cherry Hill Farm in Unionville, then a rural community north of Toronto. The ten-day conference started 1 September 1959, described43 as a “sunny, unforgettable day.” Runner reflected later it was “no small thing, that first Unionville Conference. We who were there witnessed the POWER of God at work to change the direction of student lives.”44 Allan Farris of Knox College, as an outsider, provided balance on the platform. He had been invited because he was “an ardent student of John Calvin to whose basic emphases this school owes its initial impetus.”45 Stanford Reid, less an outsider than Farris but serving the same purpose on the slate, addressed the Second Unionville Conference in 1960 on “Absolute Truth and the Relativism of History.” In those lectures, Reid called relativism the “solvent of absolute truth.” He went on to articulate clearly, unequivocally, and without apology, Christian belief in absolute truth. The final part of his lecture, the longest, addressed the issue of “absolute truth in the place of history.” “As far as the Christian historian is concerned,” Reid contended, “it is impossible to deny the apparent profound relativism of history. Nor may we ignore the importance of time and change.” He recognized that history unfolds from humankind’s attempt to subdue the earth and the resulting endeavour to solve the problems with which this task confronts us. Moreover, Reid insisted, humankind is both finite and morally corrupt. “This means that the Christian in one sense accepts a deeper historical irrationality than even some of the most convinced and thoroughgoing relativists. On the other hand, the Christian would by no means admit that this is the ultimate explanation. Mankind may twist and pervert and change course in and through history, but that is not its final meaning.”46 Sitting in the audience that day in September 1960 was C. Thomas McIntire, son of Reid’s nemesis from the 1930s, who was seeking his own intellectual identity.47 McIntire listened eagerly and was confirmed in his pursuit of history as a vocation. That conviction led him

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to the Institute of Christian Studies, founded in 1967 by the Association for Reformed Scientific Studies. The institute was patterned after the interdisciplinary Philosophical Institute of the Free University of Amsterdam. Four of the faculty – Hart, Zylstra, James Olthuis, and DeGraaf – had been directly influenced by Runner and taken doctorates at Amsterdam. Seerveld, the fifth member of the founding faculty, had gone to Amsterdam earlier and studied under Vollenhoven. Reid would interact with them and watch the school grow amid continuing and constant controversy. For the first sixteen years, the institute awarded the degree of master of philosophy on behalf of the Free University of Amsterdam. In 1983 it was chartered by the Ontario legislature and given the right to confer its own degrees.48 Stanford Reid came to the institute to read a paper on “Calvin and the Genevan School of Historiography” on 30 January 1975. The year before C.T. McIntire, now on the faculty and a fellow historian, had asked Reid for an evaluation of their new proposed experimental curriculum. Reid inquired: “Is the Institute now coming to lay all its stress on history and historiography, or is your history program merely one of a number? The prospectus is written as though history is the core of the Institute’s existence, and I rather wondered about this.”49 Reid had other questions about what became known as “The Institute”or “229,” when they moved to their present site on College Street in downtown Toronto. “With all the talk of changing society how is this to be done?” He sensed some in “The Institute” felt Anglo-Saxon Christianity “is apparently a lower brand than Dutch.” He reminded his friends there that the earliest social reformers in the new Industrial Age were Christians in Britain. He grew impatient with the institute’s constant philosophizing and its unique language, which he frequently felt was jargon accessible only to the initiated. In his view, their theorizing was endless, impractical, and nonproductive. He found the ecclesiology of “229” weak. The institute also appeared to him to place little emphasis on the local church, while wider denominational concerns and the institutional future of Christianity in Canada were off their radar. Issues such as a church’s faithfulness to scripture and its discipline and order received short shrift, and these matters had always been at the centre of Reid’s faith and life. He asked: “Until there is a renewed Christian consciousness and influence within the secular world through a renewed and reformed church, will society be radically changed in its direction?” He complained that the institute was quick to speak and too slow to hear: “The only one who really seems to have any interest in listening to my point of view is C.T. McIntire who is not involved from a nationalist (Dutch) as well as a philosophical point of view.”50 When

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Reid discussed setting up an independent institution for Reformed theological education around the corner at Knox House, he wrote to Knox Church’s assistant minister, “I believe that we would have to be rather careful with regard to the boys from the aacs for from what I know of them, I suspect that they would immediately try to move in on it and take over. I have seen their tactics ... which have resulted in splits, conflicts, and eventually disintegration at which time they have taken over in order to force their particular philosophy on the institutions.”51 It was an ideological divide. Stanford Reid was less in the antithetical camp of Evan Runner and Van Til than he realized. “I am doubtful about the biblical character of saying that a party is specifically Christian,” he wrote to someone seeking his endorsement of such an organization, “just as I have my doubts about giving ‘Christian’ as a title to trade unions and the like. I do not see that Christ or his Apostles ever thought in terms of forming a specifically Christian political party. Your statement ‘We can use government, good legislation, etc. to bring people to Christ.’ I am afraid that I disagree strongly with you at this point as the proper Christian method is to get into the existing parties and influence them.”52 Refusing a friend’s nomination of him for membership in the Association for Reformed Scientific Studies he wrote: While officially much of what they say I agree with, I have found it very difficult to reconcile the idea of the Christian’s individual responsibility with what has been largely a requirement to submit to a specific form of philosophy. Added to this, the constant repetition that one cannot be a true Christian scholar in a state or neutral university has caused me to hesitate. In fact, at one meeting where I took part in a panel on this subject when I disagreed with Dr Evan Runner on this matter, some of the members of the meeting said that I was obviously ‘not one of them.’ They follow the philosophy of Professor Herman Dooyeweerd, but seem to do so not as a guide to their thinking on a theoretical basis, but really as the absolute truth. They constantly insist that their philosophy is entirely biblical, although there seems to be a large amount of rationalism in it and I am not prepared to submit myself to this type of thinking so I have never joined.53

Family feuds can be intense, emotional, and painful. Stanford Reid and the institute both shared a common ideological legacy in the theology of John Calvin. Both were committed to the establishment of a Christian society. They both shared frustration at the lack of engagement of Christians in Canada with the political and social order. As Reid wrote in reply to an Edmonton minister who had inquired about

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the institute: “Perhaps it is time that Christians raised their voices in this country. I have tried on more than one occasion to stir up interest in forming Christian voters’ associations, but have had virtually no response. Canadian evangelicals both in their ecclesiastical relations and their social and political actions simply do not have any sense of responsibility, as far as I can see. I may be too pessimistic, but I am afraid that what I have seen, or rather not seen, has turned me off.”54 He continued to support the institute with generous financial gifts and was a welcome guest at “229” when he dropped by. Toward the end of his life he deposited some of his papers there. Paul Schrotenboer was a Christian Reformed minister with whom Stanford Reid was closely associated.55 Schrotenboer was an American by birth, a 1947 graduate of Calvin Seminary who did his doctorate on Emil Brunner under the direction of G.C. Berkouwer at the Free University of Amsterdam. He first met Reid during the summer of 1953. In September 1955, after he had completed his Ph.D., he was ordained and inducted into Calvin Christian Reformed Church of Ottawa. Stanford Reid was the preacher that evening. Calvin Church, Ottawa, became a second church home for Stanford and Priscilla Reid, welcoming Reid to the pulpit on many occasions during the five years of Schrotenboer’s ministry. Schrotenboer moved to St Catharines in 1960 and the following year was chairman for the Third Unionville Conference. He became general secretary of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod in 1964. Originally headquartered in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1966 the office relocated to Grand Rapids. As Schrotenboer was about to move, Reid wrote, regretting that the pressures on both of them had meant that they had yet to get together.56 Schrotenboer would be general secretary of the Reformed Ecumenical Synod until retirement in 1988. As such, he was the hub of an international Reformed network. The Reids and the Schrotenboers became good friends. In 1985, thirty years after Reid had spoken at his ordination, Schrotenboer wrote to him in Florida about a forthcoming visit: “We should have lots to talk about.”57 The Reformed Ecumenical Synod had been formed shortly after the war. Meeting in Grand Rapids, representatives from the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States gathered “to discuss the possibility of setting up a truly Reformed body which should find its bond of union and basis of Christian co-operation in the Word of God and the Reformed Confessions.”58 They met first in 1949 in Amsterdam, the venue the year before for the formation of the World Council of Churches. G.C. Berkouwer presided, with addresses from Professor Bouma of Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids;

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Professor Jooste of Potchefstroom University in South Africa; and Rev. G.N.M. Collins of the Free Church of Scotland.59 Stanford and Priscilla Reid attended. The next meeting of the synod was scheduled for 1953. In the meantime, a second Reformed organization with close links but with a different purpose was being formed. The International Association for Reformed Faith and Action was holding its first conference in July, enabling international delegates who would be in Europe for the Reformed Ecumenical Synod later in the summer to attend. Reid headed the Canadian chapter of the Association for Reformed Faith and Action. The conference theme was to be “The Secularization of Modern Life: A Reformed Answer,” and Reid was asked for a paper on the secularization of family life. His views on the subject were already on record. “We need a revival of the Family Altar,” he had written in the first issue of Reformation Today, “Before there can be any revival in, or reformation of, the church we must rebuild the family’s religious foundations. Without a background of a Christian home in which the children have been well and truly trained, even good Gospel preaching will be only fifty per cent effective.”60 Paul and Bernice Schrotenboer were but two with whom new and lasting friendships were made at the 1953 iarfa Conference. The conference host was Reformed scholar and president of iarfa’s International Executive Committee Jean Cadier, who lectured at the Free Faculty of Protestant Theology in Montpellier where the conference was being held. Harry Stob, professor of apologetics at Calvin Seminary, Grand Rapids, chaired the section on “The Liberty of Man.” French Protestant physician and theologian André Schlemmer of Paris spoke on “The Cure of Souls.” The preacher throughout the week was redoubtable Martyn Lloyd-Jones of Westminster Chapel, London. At Montpellier, the Reids also met for the first time the South African Philip Hughes and his wife, Margaret. “I always felt with Philip,” Reid would once say, “that we could take up exactly where we had left off the previous time even though it might be several years since we had last met.” Professor Herman Dooyeweerd of the Free University of Amsterdam read a paper on “Scientific Thought.” Montpellier 1953 initiated many friendships and anticipated further alliances among Calvinists. From Montpellier, many of the delegates went directly to Edinburgh for the third Reformed Ecumenical Synod, which met from 4 August to 13 August. That year the Free Church of Scotland was host and G.N.M. Collins presided. It was a happy affair, with the city of Edinburgh arranging a coach tour of the city and the bbc broadcasting a Sunday evening service. The Reids made friends with the South African

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delegation who were to host the next meetings in 1958 in Potchefstroom. Reid preached at Westminster Chapel, London, on 16 August, shortly before they left to return to Montreal. From the summer of 1953 on iarfa and res, usually known by their initials, operated closely in tandem, often with the same people wearing different hats. Stanford Reid was more involved in iarfa because res brought together denominations rather than individuals and its scope was more ecclesiastical. After iarfa was set up at Montpellier in 1953, regular conferences were held every two or three years. Many of them coincided with trips the Reids made overseas. Subjects for discussion were of general interest in a desire to apply Calvinism to the issues of the day. Two years after Montpellier, at Detmold Germany, iarfa delegates discussed “Jesus Christ, King of the World and Lord of Men.” Representatives from seventeen countries approved a constitution containing a doctrinal basis and the purpose of the organization: “the chief task of the International Association is to give a clear and unambiguous Reformed, that is, uncompromisingly scriptural, witness.”61 In Strasbourg in 1958 the theme was “How to Confess our Reformed Faith.” iarfa Cambridge 1961 addressed “The Authority of the Bible Today.” Stanford Reid helped to set up a quarterly journal for iarfa in 1957. The first issue of the International Reformed Bulletin, distributed out of London, had a run of 3,000 and cost £80 to print. Philip Hughes, then at Tyndale Hall, Bristol, was editor and Reid served as associate editor. From 1961 to 1966, the Bulletin alternated between English and Dutch. In 1966 Reed wrote Bernard Zylstra, studying at the Free University, inquiring as to whether it could continue. He faced fragmentation in the Reformed movement: “the Dutch element in Canada ... are very suspicious of anyone who is not Dutch and particularly not crc so that they are not too anxious to have any dealing with most of the ‘Americans.’ This doesn’t help.”62 It would be a continuing problem as the magazine struggled to be financially viable. Reid had considerable experience with short-funded periodicals. “The Church: Its Place and Mission in the Contemporary World” was the subject of iarfa’s August 1964 conference at Woudschoten, Zeist, outside Utrecht, in the Netherlands. Stanford Reid, as vicepresident of iarfa, gave a paper on “The Power of the Reformation in the Contemporary World.” Eighty delegates attended, twenty nationalities were represented, four languages used, and, as Reid reported later, “the participants began their journey home with happy memories of a stimulating meeting, old acquaintanceships renewed and many new ones made, all of which had led to a deeper understanding of their Christian responsibilities today.”63 Four years

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later, iarfa met at Nottingham, England, to explore “Christian Education.” In 1970 at the ifes Study Centre in Mittersill in Austria, a hundred delegates met under the heading “The Spirit of Revelation and the Rule of Christ.” At Brèvres in France in 1972 the subject was the environment under the rubric: “Man – God’s Trustee in Creation.” In 1975 the Reids finally, after many invitations, had the opportunity to travel to South Africa to an iarfa-sponsored First International Conference of Reformed Institutions for Higher Education. Held at Potchefstroom, the conference drew 130 delegates, seventy-two of them from the Republic of South Africa. Seventy-six different institutions were represented, fifty-two of them outside South Africa. The first day Stanford Reid chaired a discussion on “the position of the Christian lecturer, teacher and student at the secular institution, and of the non-Christian student at the Christian institution.” He wrote later that “two members of the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto walked out before I presented my paper. They were not prepared to listen as they knew that I did not accept their interpretation of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy – and knowing Dooyeweerd quite well, I am doubtful if he would!”64 The next year, at an iarfa Conference on “God the Creator,” held at Carberry Towers outside Edinburgh, Stanford read a paper titled “The Presence of God and the Hope of Man.” In 1978 Stanford Reid was chairman of the first North American iarfa conference, held in Grand Rapids. As delegates gathered, he summarized iarfa’s accomplishments during its first quarter century: “The International Association was founded twenty-five years ago in Montpellier, France, and has progressed and developed since that time. It has held conferences in various parts of Europe, has published a bulletin which has had no little influence on the theological world, and above all has brought Calvinists of various races and backgrounds together to have fellowship and to grow in understanding and cooperation. It has also been involved in various publishing ventures which have been of importance to many of the Reformed brethren. We in North America hope that by the holding of this conference in Grand Rapids we shall see a surge forward in the Association’s work and witness on this continent.”65 Reid’s keynote address introduced the conference theme, “God’s People as Ferment.” “The kingdom is not limited to the old ways, and as the Spirit moves within Christ’s subjects there will be a bursting forth to bring more of the redeemed into the kingdom and to leaven the worldly society in which it exists. This was the original purpose of the founding of iarfa twenty-five years ago: may God grant that it will in future continue to act as leaven, expanding greatly to influence not

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only the church but society as a whole.”66 Brave words, but the future did not bear out his aspirations for the organization. The following year an iarfa conference, capitalizing on recent spring and fall day conferences of the Canadian Association for Reformed Faith and Action, was scheduled for the University of Guelph for 30 July to 3 August. However, plans for the meeting, requiring strong financial backing and logistical support, broke down and it was never held.67 By that time, the Calvinist network was showing signs of strain. The Reformed Ecumenical Synod, already under stress over concerns that member denominations supported apartheid, finally fell apart when the Christian Reformed Church in the Netherlands allowed full participation of homosexuals in 1979, and res was perceived as having made an inadequate response the following year. In 1981 iarfa ceased publishing the International Reformed Bulletin. Some found, as Stanford Reid had when two of the institute staff walked out before his lecture in Potchefstroom in 1975, that “229” was too “in your face” and intolerant of differing opinions. There were other ruptures. In 1984 Stanford Reid wrote a letter of commiseration to Schrotenboer, who was dealing with Calvinist conflict: “I do hope and pray that the res will not fall apart at the coming meeting, but evangelicals, and especially Reformed people, seem to have the feeling that if everything is not according to their views, at least 100% then they should pull out and leave. It is too bad as they lose much of their strength for reform in this way. So often they just seem to be looking for a chance to separate.”68 Unfortunately, separation did occur and res lost much of its constituency. “The Reformed churches have a long tradition of brawny discourse,” one outsider concluded. “The virtue in all that brawling is that these people take the truth seriously.”69 As we will see in the next chapter, once-friendly Calvinists found relationships souring over disagreements over whether Norman Shepherd was heretical on justification by faith. iarfa limped along in the 1980s, its leadership unable or unwilling to involve a new generation of Calvinists. In 1987 Stanford Reid announced his retirement as North American vice-president, a position he had held since the 1950s. Jan Dengerink, long-time president of iarfa wrote on behalf of the executive committee meeting in Switzerland that they were “thankful for the cooperation with you during a period of more than thirty years.”70 Who speaks for John Calvin? It was a pressing concern throughout Stanford Reid’s career as an interpreter of John Calvin and a friend of Calvinists of various stripes. From his days as a student at Westminster he had been identified as a disciple. Westminster Seminary, where Norman Shepherd taught, was just beginning to feel the initial tremors of

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a shaking of the foundations that would bring many of the Calvinist luminaries with whom Stanford Reid had been friends over many years into conflict. Shepherd’s views on justification by faith highlighted the question. The controversy that ensued would threaten not only the unity of the Reformed family but also the future of Westminster Seminary, an institution that had been at the centre of the contemporary Calvin revival.

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15 A Painful Parting, 1977–1983 Justifying Justification

In January 1977 Stanford and Priscilla Reid arrived in Philadelphia. He had arranged to spend his sabbatical from the University of Guelph as visiting professor of church history at Westminster Theological Seminary. Sabbaticals are supposed to be a time of quiet reflection and scholarly pursuit. Instead, Reid found himself thrust into the centre of a controversy that would consume him for the next seven years and cast a long shadow over the rest of his life. From the time he had come to Westminster Seminary in the autumn of 1935, the school had defined who Reid was. It was more than theological. His circle of friends, his outlook on life, and his sense of academic vocation, owed everything to the Reformed theology he had imbibed there. When Gordon Clark’s friends had left the board of trustees of the seminary in 1946, he had responded eagerly to an urgent telegram asking him to allow his name to stand for nomination. For more than thirty years he had faithfully attended meetings. He was a consistent supporter of the school, sending several students to do their theological study there. For one student, the son of a tmr Church elder, that had backfired,1 but generally those who went to the school as a result of his recommendation were satisfied that they had received a first class theological education. But by the 1970s, Stanford Reid was having misgivings about Westminster. “I know from my own experience,” he wrote president Edmund Clowney following his sabbatical, “that the graduates of the past ten years from Westminster have generally been a dead loss up here in our church as far as working within the church for reform is

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concerned ... They have wrecked more than a few congregations, and I for one am beginning to wonder if Westminster graduates really have anything to offer to the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and I am beginning to wonder this even more in the light of Norman Shepherd’s teaching on justification.”2 Westminster Seminary was the last place one would expect there to be differences over the foundational Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone. The controversy that ensued not only preoccupied Stanford Reid for a decade, it was also (as it turned out) the opening salvo in an increasingly fractious debate among evangelicals. As they began to cooperate with Roman Catholics over social issues such as abortion, theological distinctives demanded definition. The 1994 statement “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” would split the ranks. Evangelical New Testament scholar N. Thomas Wright3 called for a reformulation of the traditional understanding of Paul’s teaching. And most significant for Stanford Reid, confessional subscription was at issue. Ironically Reid’s first encounter with Norman Shepherd (in 1969) was over the question of whether Paul Schrotenboer should be reappointed as a seminary trustee. Schrotenboer had minor qualms about the Confession, but was prepared to swear adherence ex animo. That was not enough for Shepherd: “any difference in theology in his view presents some kind of an attack (either latent or patent) upon the confession itself.”4 Reid described that position as a “pattern of extraconfessional requirements.”5 Shepherd was later challenged as to whether he really accepted that “faith is the alone instrument of justification,” as the Westminster Confession requires (XI:2). Norman Shepherd was associate professor of systematic theology and successor to John Murray. As a 1958 graduate of the seminary, Shepherd had studied under Murray, taking a graduate degree the following year. He was generally regarded as Murray’s anointed successor and went on to pursue a Ph. D. at the Free University of Amsterdam. Both Shepherd and Murray worshipped at an unusual, psalm-singing, Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Havertown. Shepherd came back to teach at Westminster in 1963 as Murray was about to retire after thirty-six years as professor of systematic theology. When asked how challenging it was to succeed that icon of Reformed theology, Shepherd replied deferentially that “truly great teachers are never replaced; others may teach the same courses, but great men are not replaced.”6 Knowing what Murray taught was not difficult: all his notes were dictated to succeeding generations of students in order that they would inscribe his ipsissima verba in their examination booklets. Such concern for detail did not encourage speculation, let alone innovation.

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In spite of his deference to his mentor, Norman Shepherd was determined not to be in John Murray’s shadow. As he wrote, “With the profoundest respect for the past, Professor Murray is teaching us to look forward to the future, and that means to Christ.” He quoted Murray approvingly in a 1975 tribute: “When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation.”7 The question of theological innovation would dominate the forthcoming controversy. For Shepherd justification by faith provided just that opportunity for further theological reflection and formulation. Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in suburban Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had witnessed phenomenal growth under the magnetic leadership of D. James Kennedy and its program of outreach, “Evangelism Explosion,” was copied in many congregations. Seminars encouraged teams to go out and knock on doors and ask the leading question: “If you were to die tonight and God were to ask you ‘Why should I let you into heaven?,’ what would you say?” On being invited inside, visitors would go through the Campus Crusade pamphlet “Four Spiritual Laws.” Results were expected. Conversions were predictable and immediate: the formula worked. Westminster had always been accused of being lukewarm about outreach and evangelism. Now C. John Miller, minister of a new and rapidly growing congregation in nearby Jenkintown, became lecturer on evangelism at the seminary. Miller inspired a whole group of churches in the Orthodox Presbyterian denomination clustered under the name “New Life.” But others at the seminary nicknamed the evangelistic pamphlet the “Four Spiritual Flaws,” and Norman Shepherd found such an approach to the Christian faith simplistic. The “repeatafter-me” formula that guaranteed immediate access to heaven was, to quote the German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, cheapened grace. Which door was this new evangelistic methodology opening: the front, into the church, only to find quickly the back door out? Superficial faith encounters were creating instant believers whose concept of discipleship could be minimal. Was easy-believism a cop-out for the rigorous and demanding path of discipleship and faith? At issue, Shepherd claimed, was the recovery of a Biblical doctrine of justification by faith: what did it really mean? Norman Shepherd’s controversial views on justification by faith evolved slowly over the 1970s. They emerged first in his lectures and became public only at a meeting of the Presbytery of Ohio of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (opc) held 7 February 1975. David Cummings, youngest son of Westminster trustee Calvin Knox

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Cummings of Pittsburgh, was denied a license to preach because of his answers to questions about justification by faith. When asked the source of his untraditional interpretation, Cummings replied that this was what he had been taught at Westminster Seminary by Norman Shepherd. The shock waves were felt immediately throughout the small denomination. In response to concerned faculty members, Shepherd prepared a discussion paper in 1976 of fifty-three pages, not intended for distribution, entitled “The Relation of Good Works to Justification in the Westminster Standards.” It made a startling and categorical statement: “To insist on faith alone for justification is a serious impoverishment, indeed, a contravention of the teaching of the Westminster standards.”8 The issue was now joined. And Stanford Reid had arrived for his sabbatical as fierce debate was going on among faculty and students. At the beginning of April 1977, there were three faculty meetings with Norman Shepherd in a single weekend, the final one lasting six and a half hours. Reid concluded at the end of the meeting that “He still insists that faith must be accompanied with repentance and good works or obedience, or it is not true faith and so is not the sole instrument of justification.”9 A vote was taken and by a margin of ten to eight, with two abstentions, it was agreed to recommend to the trustees that Shepherd’s views were “allowable.” As a visiting professor, Reid was a non-voting member. But he had strong views, which he submitted in a paper entitled “Faith and Justification: A Consideration of the Views of Norman Shepherd”10 to the board of trustees in May 1977. After reading “The Relation of Good Works to Justification in the Westminster Standards,” Stanford Reid found Shepherd’s teaching summarized in his answer to a single question: “What do we say to a sinner asking on his knees what he must do to be saved?” Shepherd’s answer was: “We can say with Paul and Silas, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But it just might be more appropriate to say, Why do you wait? Rise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on his name. (Acts 22:16) Deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Christ (Matthew 16:24). The command to believe and the command to follow Christ doing as he commanded are not ultimately different answers ... To ask for obedience is not a fundamentally different thing than to ask for faith, though faith and obedience may be distinguished as descriptive of a single total response from different perspectives.”11 To Reid, Shepherd’s insistence that good works go with faith alone, making faith and works “almost identical,” was a denial of the Reformation. “One cannot but conclude,” he stated, describing Shepherd’s position,

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“that in fact works are part of faith, or that justification is attained by faith-works.”12 Shepherd also appeared to his critics to have denied the Reformation when he said, in a paper written two years earlier, that “A sinner is not ‘really converted’ until he is baptized.”13 He railed against “the minor role played by baptism in modern evangelistic methodology,” which contrasts “so strikingly with the major place it holds in the Great Commission.” Comparing what he called regeneration-evangelism with covenant-evangelism, he endorsed the latter because it emphasized baptism as a practical demonstration of obedience on the part of the convert. “The law is ‘no trifling matter for you; it is your life,’”as he quoted Deuteronomy 32:47. “Baptism,” he concluded, “is therefore to be understood as of a piece with the total transformation which is salvation.”14 “Surely Professor Shepherd means something different from what he says?” Sinclair Ferguson, a Church of Scotland minister and rising star among Reformed systematic theologians, asked in his review of the book in which Shepherd’s paper had appeared.15 Ferguson noted the confusion between “the sign and the things signified,” which was “an offence against Reformed teaching.” He concluded: “It would be our hope that, for the welfare of the reformed churches, Professor Shepherd would return to the drawing board, and come again, so that we may hear him further on these matters.” In 1982 Sinclair Ferguson succeeded Norman Shepherd in the chair of systematic theology at Westminster. Shepherd’s view of baptism also surprised Priscilla Reid. At a meeting of student and faculty wives, she heard Shepherd state that “when his baby was baptized she became a Christian.” Stanford would recount the incident later in a letter: “[Shepherd] was rather rude when she maintained that to become a Christian meant the work of the Holy Spirit, not just the performance of an outward rite, and Norman got a round of applause from some students who were present.”16 In Shepherd’s teaching, Reid caught a whiff of “legalism,” which he also had perceived in John Murray. “But,” he quickly added, “[Murray] had the knowledge not to let it get out of control.” And Reid concluded: “I believe that the ultimate end of his position is a sacramentalism which has already appeared in his views on baptism.”17 Priscilla Reid’s perception of Shepherd as “rude” was shared by others. Their perception would have far-reaching implications in the debate. Unable to secure a personal interview with the Seminary’s president, Edmund Clowney, when he was about to leave Westminster at the end of his sabbatical, Stanford Reid wrote him with his conclusions about the health of the institution. He was “very put off with Norman’s

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conduct of himself in all the discussion which the faculty had with him. He almost never answered a question frankly or directly. If anyone quoted a statement to him from the Confession, the catechisms or the Bible, he would always agree, and then go on with one of his ‘buts’ which virtually nullified the protasis of his statement. If on the other hand, one asked him a question, almost always he answered by asking a question in return ...” Exasperated, when Reid finally asked Shepherd why he refused to answer his question he – at least according to Reid – “never opened his mouth for the rest of the meeting.”18 Shepherd may not have intended to appear arrogant – he was essentially a shy and private man – but his personality did not help his cause. Four years later, Shepherd would apologize to Reid for his demeanour that day. As Reid went on to explain to Clowney, Shepherd’s interpretation of justification by faith raised some painful and personal issues for him. He recalled his own conversion at a street corner in east end Montreal at the age of fourteen. Shepherd reminded him of his own father, whose preaching was “orthodox and eloquent.” W.D. “always spoke in the same way as Norman Shepherd about commitment, allegiance, obedience, etc.” It was only when Reid first heard the doctrine of justification by faith alone that he understood the gospel.19 A majority of the faculty disagreed that Shepherd was a heretic. As a result of further discussions they held, the board was informed in April of 1977 that “the faculty has concluded that Mr Shepherd’s position on justification does not contradict the Word of God or the Westminster standards ... the faculty expresses its confidence in Mr Shepherd’s theology and teaching. The faculty believes it is unnecessary for the Board of Trustees to investigate this matter any further.” But at a faculty meeting on 3 May 1977, it was noted “that certain of Mr Shepherd’s statements on the subject of justification require further consideration and modification to avoid obscuring the teaching of the Scriptures and the Westminster standards.”20 The board of trustees met on 24–25 May 1977. Reid wrote a fellow trustee in apocalyptic terms: “We feel that it may well be the end, or at least the beginning of the end of Westminster as a bastion of the Reformed faith. Pray for us and come prepared to do battle at the next Board meeting!”21 A spate of submissions greeted them: the draft majority declaration from the faculty with their affirmation of Shepherd, a further statement from several faculty22 supporting the view of the majority, a defence of Shepherd from New Testament professor Richard Gaffin, and a minority expression from faculty23 concerned about Shepherd’s orthodoxy. After considerable debate, the trustees referred the matter back to the faculty for more study.

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Two days after that meeting, Stanford sent out to all the trustees his five-page paper, “Faith and Justification: A Consideration of the Views of Norman Shepherd.” He wrote: “My prayer is that this may be definitively settled at the next board meeting, for it can only damage both the Seminary’s unity and its public image, since Professor Shepherd’s views are becoming known and many people are raising questions about the Seminary’s loyalty to the Reformed Faith.”24 On one page of the documents considered by the board he added in his own hand “the beginning of the end.” The doomsday scenario was never far away in his thinking: most other American institutions established to defend the Reformed faith had faltered. Why would Westminster Seminary think herself any different from this seemingly inevitable historical trend? Another initiative was taken following the May meeting of the trustees. On the 27th a charge was filed against Shepherd. Prosecuted at the 30 September 1977 meeting of the opc Presbytery of Philadelphia, the fama was initiated by Westminster’s librarian Arthur Kuschke. There was considerable debate as to whether Shepherd’s discussion paper of 1 October 1976, “The Relation of Good Works to Justification,” could be admitted as evidence. Faculty members appealed to the presbytery to disallow the paper as it had been given “as a basis for discussion within the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary” and was thus privileged information not intended to be circulated. Kuschke asked Reid to write a letter to John Mitchell, the moderator of presbytery, before the meeting. The letter, dated 24 September, would eventually be read at a second meeting to consider the matter held on 19 November. As an outsider – both ecclesiastically and in nationality – Reid’s judgment in acceding to Kuschke’s request was at best questionable. He was beginning to look like an interfering man with a vendetta. As a member of the board of trustees of Westminster, he was trading in privileged information and making it public. Debating the issue in presbytery had indeed made the whole controversy much more public. Following the 30 September presbytery meeting, Norman Shepherd felt that he was free to share it with one of his senior year classes, asking students for prayer. The next day, as Kuschke informed Reid,25 “[Professor] Strimple announced to the entire student body that charges had been filed against Mr Shepherd, and disclosed the issue – justification; and requested restraint because the charges had not yet been heard in the Presbytery.” Reid did not attend the next meeting of the trustees on 9 February 1978 because he was in Europe. Several submissions from the faculty minority were received. Church historian Robert Godfrey, a close friend of Reid’s, wrote that the “inevitable conclusion of all the debate

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and discussion is that Mr Shepherd’s views on justification stand in contrast to Reformed orthodoxy.” Professor Palmer Robertson described them as “dangerously misleading.” The board of trustees set up a committee, of which Reid was a member, to set general policy with regard to tenure and removal of faculty. At that meeting the trustees asked Norman Shepherd to submit an amended formulation eliminating “objectionable elements” and “misleading statements.” Shepherd in turn filed a statement on 1 March providing a “Further Response.” On his return from overseas, Reid’s reaction was initially favourable: I am quite impressed with the first two pages. He seems to retract some of the position he held in his earlier papers. But then when I come to the last three pages, he seems to take it all back and reiterate his old position. He speaks of obedience as being ‘related to faith, whether as concomitant, as fruit or as evidence,’ and then seems to opt for it as concomitant. The fundamental question is: which is it? Those terms do not all mean the same thing. He also speaks of ‘obedient faith .... as a necessary, but certainly not meritorious condition for being in a state of salvation and thus in a state of justification.’ It is very well for him to say that obedience is not meritorious although necessary, but how does he distinguish this? To my mind this is exactly where Arminianism, if not Pelagianism starts. It gives man some input into his justification, and that by all Reformed standards is out.26

Professor Godfrey, whose views on justification had been attacked by Shepherd as Lutheran rather than Reformed, wrote to Reid: “I think you are right that the March 1 paper makes our task more difficult. I believe that it presents very sophisticated ambiguities that the charitable mind will read as acceptable.”27 After six full faculty meetings and seven special committee meetings during March and April, the majority faculty report exonerated Shepherd. Reid’s one-word reaction, pencilled in the margin of that report, was simply “Nonsense.” His good friend, noted scholar and author Philip Hughes, visiting professor of New Testament and Reformation studies, agreed. In an eleven-page report he stated categorically: “In this discussion it is essential to remember that it is the doctrine of justification that is at issue. No one, I imagine, wishes to deny that the faith which is the principle of justification is also the principle of the life of faith, that is, of sanctification, that the root of faith produces the fruit of good works which are pleasing to God. But the attempt is being made to connect these good works with faith in such a way that, though defined as nonmeritorious, they are regarded as necessary to our future (or final or eschatological) justification: no good works, no heaven! ... The right-

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eousness of Christ ... is reckoned to him as the sole ground of his acceptability before God.”28 President Edmund Clowney, who had voted with the majority to exonerate Shepherd, nevertheless admitted at a faculty meeting on 25 April 1978 that “It is clear that it [i.e., Norman Shepherd’s views on justification] represents a clear break with the Princeton theology of Charles Hodge.”29 But he went on to ask, “Does this also represent a significant break with the Westminster standards?” Shepherd, according to Clowney, had stated that his position “went beyond the standards but is true to their Reformed structure.” Clowney, on the other hand, responded that “when he insists on moving obedience back from the way to the entering of the way it is plain that his formulation differs significantly from that of the catechism.” In his personal copy of Clowney’s statement, now in the Westminster archives, Reid heavily underlined that admission. But Clowney still stood with his faculty member: “Since [Norman Shepherd] stressed the faith character of the new obedience and insists that our obedience adds nothing to Christ’s righteousness as the ground of justification, he does not significantly depart from the system of doctrine of our Standards.” At its May 1978 meeting, the trustees refused to concur with the majority faculty report affirming Norman Shepherd. They had received a huge dossier of documents: letters, appeals, and counter statements. One in support of the faculty report was signed by eighteen members, including veteran professors Cornelius Van Til and Paul Woolley. They received the faculty report but, after heated and impassioned debate, gave Shepherd a leave of absence to study the matter further. Tempers were beginning to fray. After a previous acrimonious debate had made Reid snap, one of his friends observed kindly: “I guess we all had our times of weakness. Yours seemed to be toward the close of the previous meeting, at least some interpreted it that way.”30 The pressure on faculty and trustees was intense. The following summer marked a short-lived truce. Shepherd had intended to spend the entire year of his sabbatical at the Free University of Amsterdam, studying the doctrine of union with Christ in sixteenth-century Reformed thinking. By October, he had turned to a study of justification by faith and used the time to revise his October 1976 statement. “Thirty-four Theses on Justification in Relation to Faith, Repentance, and Good Works” was submitted to the opc Presbytery of Philadelphia and became a subject of debate for a full year. Shepherd apologized for his earlier paper and acknowledged that some of its formulations were obscure or misleading, and at other points loosely written or ambiguous.

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The paper, when it was published,31 provided considerable plausibility to Shepherd’s critics, who maintained that little had been changed since his October 1976 statement. Notable evidences of this inflexibility were the following of the thirty-four theses: Thesis 20: “The Pauline affirmation in Romans 2:13, ‘The doers of the Law will be justified,’ is ... to be understood ... in the sense that faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ will be justified.” Thesis 21: “The exclusive ground of the justification of the believer in the state of justification is the righteousness of Jesus Christ, but his obedience ... is necessary to his continuing in a state of justification.” Thesis 22: “The righteousness of Jesus Christ ever remains the exclusive ground of the believer’s justification, but the personal godliness of the believer is also necessary for his justification in the judgment of the last day.” Thesis 23: “... good works ... though not the ground of [the believer’s] justification, are nevertheless necessary ... for justification.”

This document, however, was not available for the 13 November board meeting. A day before, Stanford Reid called a caucus of selected and like-minded members of the board and faculty. Unbridgeable polarities were becoming evident. As the trustees met, Reid moved: “That the formulation of Mr Shepherd on the doctrine of justification as received to this point, is not acceptable to the Board.” His motion was defeated by a single vote. Owing to the length of session, several members of the board who voted with the minority then left to make travel connections. After their departure, President Clowney moved that the board finds “no sufficient cause to pursue further its inquiries into the teaching of Professor Norman Shepherd regarding the doctrine of justification by faith.” His motion was approved by a vote of eleven to eight. The board went on to agree, perhaps as a concession to the minority, that “Board members [be] allowed to share with persons outside the Board discussion papers on the subject of justification.” Too late for the trustees meeting, Shepherd’s “Thirty-four Theses” was distributed. Clowney called a meeting, later known as “the Downington Conference,” to discuss its content. He chose as venue a Lancaster County inn that provided a relaxed atmosphere some distance from the seminary. Those attending from the faculty, in addition to Clowney and Shepherd, were Dean Strimple, Robert Godfrey, and Richard Gaffin. Also present was visiting professor Meredith Kline, formerly a Westminster faculty member, now at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Palmer Robertson was invited but declined after his suggestion that “fresh insights offered by the inclusion of individuals from the

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broader church community”32 would be beneficial was turned down. Staffer Leslie Sloat took his place. Norman Shepherd began with a speech lasting over an hour. Instead of referring to his thirty-four theses, he spoke personally about himself, his background, and how he had come to this position. The discussion proceeded and progress appeared to be being made. But then Norman Shepherd dropped a bombshell. He affirmed that it was possible for a person to lose their justification. The conference broke up having failed to unify the faculty and without making any ultimate contribution to the debate. Having been denied a chance to attend the Downington meeting, Reid submitted his own “Memorandum Re Norman Shepherd’s Views on Justification.” He wrote: “After reading Shepherd’s theses a number of times, I have come to the conclusion that he has confused the issue by failing to see the relation of justification to other aspects of salvation.” What particularly upset Reid was his perception of the logical conclusion of Shepherd’s position, now confirmed by report(s) he had received about the Downington Conference, that a believer could fall from grace. On reading Shepherd’s thirty-four theses, he reflected: “There is also the implication in thesis 32 that the elect can fall from grace, despite the introductory statement.”33 The next month, January 1979, Reid taught with Westminster Professor Harvie Conn at a winterim (a fortnight of intensive inter-semester courses) at Toronto’s Ontario Theological Seminary. In conversations with Reid, Conn defended Shepherd, while admitting a certain rigidity in Shepherds’s views. He spoke disparagingly of those opposed to Shepherd, describing one such person as “a heresy-hunter.” This perception of Reid and his friends was becoming increasingly common.34 Heresy-hunting is not a popular sport, nor are those who indulge in the activity much appreciated. Reid, about to retire from the University of Guelph, was tiring of the debate. He wrote to long-time confidant and friend Murray Forst Thompson, treasurer of the seminary: “Personally, I am getting fed up with all the fancy footwork. I am used to it in our church in Canada, but I certainly thought the operations of WTS would be conducted at a different ethical level. At this point I am facing a real crisis in my own thinking about the whole matter. Should I be wasting my time fighting what seems to be a losing battle at the seminary, or should I be devoting my attention to the possibility of setting up a really Reformed seminary in Canada?”35 Other trustees were also wearying of the debate. As the February 1979 meeting of the board approached, Joel Nederhood of the

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Christian Reformed Church’s Back to God radio broadcast, who wished to exonerate Shepherd, wrote: “I am also concerned about whether or not Norman Shepherd’s position and actions over the three and a half years have had a deleterious impact upon the morale of the professors and student body of the Seminary.”36 Nederhood wanted the seminary to get on with its mission. Joseph Memmelaar, a physician from Bangor, Maine, was more direct: “Our Board for the first time is polarized. Neither ‘pole’ can win. We have been guilty of acts and procedures unbecoming to the high office we have been called to.”37 At the 8 February 1979 board meeting, Clowney recommended that the board find “no sufficient cause to pursue further its inquiries into the teaching of Professor Norman Shepherd regarding the doctrine of justification by faith.” By a vote of eleven to eight, the motion carried. Of the eight dissenters five, among them Stanford Reid, asked that their dissent be recorded. Reconciliation now became Clowney’s concern. The divisions were deep. Clowney argued that, in fairness to Shepherd, the board could not reopen the matter – as ten members had suggested doing in an open letter – without preferring charges against him and demonstrating conclusively that his views violated the theological position of the school.38 To help in this reconciliation, and as the only alternative to a heresy trial, Clowney proposed a Committee of Five who would draft a statement that, Clowney hoped, would finally reconcile the entire board to retaining Norman Shepherd on the Westminster faculty. Seeking consensus on the board, Clowney had agreed to an amendment, later highly important, that the Committee of Five should “seek the counsel ... of other theological scholars in discharging its task.” The amendment as approved significantly altered Clowney’s proposal, making “outside theologians” the ultimate arbiters. The committee interpreted its mission to be reopening the Shepherd case as it called for outsiders to provide viewpoints of Shepherd’s theology based on their experience, knowledge, and distance. That interpretation was quite different from Clowney’s when he originally made his proposal. The Committee of Five, as appointed, consisted of attorney Kenneth Ryskamp of Miami as chairman; two ministers: pro-Shepherd Thomas Vanden Heuvel from California and anti-Shepherd Paul Settle from South Carolina; Richard Gaffin, Shepherd’s defender from the faculty; and Palmer Robertson, an outspoken opponent. The chairman of the board, Theodore Pappas, who remained inactive, and President Clowney were ex officio and non-voting. On these seven (or six, as it turned out) men would rest the future of the seminary. It was a recipe for deadlock with so much resting on the tie-breaking vote of the chairman.

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At a special convocation at the beginning of the 1979–80 academic year, the seminary marked its half century. There seemed too little to celebrate; among insiders tension was rife. Stanford, one of Westminster’s better known alumni who had consistently maintained his Reformed convictions, felt excluded, which was very painful.39 That autumn, Reid spent the first weeks of retirement as a visiting professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago, lecturing twenty hours a week. In a letter to Robert Godfrey, he reported that “the Westminster situation is well known out there,”40 and in another letter, he wrote to six of the trustees, that students had chosen Trinity over Westminster because of the Shepherd controversy.41 Meanwhile, the Committee of Five continued to meet. They first agreed that the board had been premature to close off debate about Norman Shepherd.42 Palmer Robertson received permission to solicit outside opinions. He and Paul Settle, the two committee members who were anti-Shepherd, sent out a letter in October 1979 asking various “experts” in Reformed theology to respond to Shepherd’s original 1976 presentation to the faculty along with subsequent documents. Luminaries such as Martyn Lloyd-Jones, retired minister of London’s Westminster Chapel, were approached. Each was given four weeks to respond. Some required more time. When Shepherd and his friends found out about the letter, they were furious. He alleged that “the questions given to the jurors were clearly prejudicial. They were framed with a view to securing the kind of response that would advance the cause of those who frame them. The framers encouraged the jurors to find theological heterodoxy.”43 He had reason to be concerned: the responses to the questions as phrased were generally negative. Lloyd-Jones stated emphatically that “I am in entire agreement with the view of Philip E. Hughes, Stanford Reid and Palmer Robertson.” He went on: “His view of justification is that of the Roman Catholics,” and further it represents a “misunderstanding of and misuse of the Westminster Confession and the Catechisms.” In four conclusions, Lloyd-Jones explained his analysis of Shepherd’s views: (1) “His teaching is a subtle form of legalism and eventually is ‘another gospel.’” (2) “His teaching makes assurance virtually impossible as one is never satisfied with one’s works.” (3) “His teaching is contrary to that of the evangelicals of the last 400 years and he seems to rejoice in this!” (4) “To teach this to students is tragically wrong.”44 Roger Nicole, professor of systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, agreed with Shepherd’s critics but wrote directly to him: “I hope that in writing as I do I am acting as a brother not an adversary, for this is what I would like to be to you, and you to me.”45 Commentator William Hendricksen, was specific: “As I see it, we must

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choose between Shepherd’s view and that of Paul.”46 Historian Gregg Singer, Reid’s longtime friend, stated: “I would hereby agree with the criticism of Dr Stanford Reid as it applies to the statements on page 33 of Norman Shepherd’s first statement of the case.”47 The Committee of Five worked throughout the winter of 1980. Reid was upset that Shepherd (as he recounted in a letter to six of the trustees in March) initially had refused to meet with the Committee of Five “unless all the other members of faculty were placed in the same position by board resolution.”48 The following month Godfrey, as a critic of Shepherd, and Shepherd himself, did discuss the draft report with the committee. Palmer Robertson’s questions to Shepherd were greeted with stony silence. “Mr Shepherd still held to his original formulations,”49 he concluded. The final report consisted of a sixteenpage “Westminster Statement on Justification” and three sets of affirmations and denials in the classic theological format. The first concerned justification, the second the relationship of faith and good works in relation to justification, and the third addressed election, the covenant, assurance, and perseverance as related to justification. Throughout the weeks prior to May 1980, board meetings of the trustees were bombarded by material from all sides. The student body became actively involved. The session of Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Glenside, where Shepherd now worshipped, presented an eloquent testimony to Mr Shepherd as “an effective minister of the gospel ... patiently, lovingly and clearly teaching the Word of God to us.”50 There was a petition from former students at the opc General Assembly. Alumni lined up to express their gratitude for Shepherd’s teaching, one calling his possible dismissal “a tragic loss.” In addition, Cornelius Van Til weighed in with a five-page letter. John Kinnaird, an elder in the Oxford, PA, opc wrote: “Were you to remove Norman Shepherd, you would be removing one of your greatest sources of strength.”51 By the time of the board meeting on 27 May 1980, the air was electric with rumour and passion. When the majority and minority reports of the Committee of Five were presented, President Clowney outlined to the trustees three possible courses of action in regard to Norman Shepherd: the board could exonerate Shepherd, it could find adequate cause for dismissal, or it could establish a commission on allegations to determine if charges should be brought against him. Kenneth Ryskamp, as chairman of the Committee of Five, argued for the first option. But the third course of action, strongly endorsed by the president, passed and a commission was appointed to draw up charges that “if substantiated, might justify the removal of a tenured faculty member at Westminster.”

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The commission of seven drew up seven allegations. On 9 October they met with Shepherd for nine hours. At the end of their discussion, they were divided four to three over what they had heard, the majority recommending that Norman Shepherd be exonerated. The minority suggested two options for the board: dismiss Shepherd because his formulations were misleading, or ask him to resign because of the uncertainties about his position in spite of the fact that his work was praiseworthy. In the meantime, for some the debate was becoming bitter and personal. Stanford Reid had been one of three signatories52 to a letter to the Presbytery of Philadelphia that had included a copy of the minority report of the Committee of Five, which some regarded as privileged information. Shepherd was deeply disturbed. He first wrote a short letter of protest to the trustees, then followed it up two months later with one of seven pages to the Philadelphia Presbytery.53 The first spoke of “the methods now being employed by Messrs Reid, Cumming, and Bean ... to discredit my position and undermine my standing among the brethren of the presbytery.” To the presbytery he wrote, “Irreparable damage is being done to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, to Westminster Seminary, and to me personally. The discussion has been brought down from the high level on which it has been conducted up to this point. Responsible theological discussion has yielded to the spectacle of political manoeuvres and ecclesiastical power plays.” Two trustees, Stanford Reid and Everett Bean of Sydney, Cape Breton, soon became targets as clergy of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. One pro-Shepherd trustee reported that “I was seated by a gentleman [at the alumni banquet] from the Maritimes whose son was graduating. During the course of the ensuing conversation, the question of Professor Shepherd’s competency arose and he stated very emphatically that it was not Shepherd who was confusing his son and the church, but two members of the board who were with a liberal Canadian Church at the same time holding membership in Westminster’s Board of Trustees.”54 The meeting of the trustees was changed to 10 December 1980, to accommodate the commission because their report required additional time. This meant that Stanford Reid did not see how he could attend on the new date because of a scheduling conflict. In early September he had written to the chairman of the board giving regrets: “I have come to the position that this matter must be settled finally once and for all, and the sooner the better. Four years ago I pleaded with the board to get it all cleared up and we are still to use a Scottish expression, ‘havering’ over it. I think that the decline in financial support is largely due to this indecision on our part and it may also be reflected in the drop this year of enrollment.”55

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Seeing the urgency of his being present, Reid rearranged his schedule and attended. That December meeting turned out to be a procedural nightmare. The motion to exonerate Shepherd lost by a tie vote, eleven to eleven. The motion by the minority – that Shepherd resign – lost as well, by a vote of twelve to nine. Finally a motion to exonerate with an additional amendment that Shepherd take care in expressing his views passed by thirteen to nine. For the third time, Shepherd had been vindicated. A week before Christmas, Reid wrote to those who had voted against exonerating Shepherd: “The final votes must have come as a very real shock. I know that it did to me. The immediate reaction of some who registered their dissent from the majority vote was that this was the end of Westminister and that resignation could be the only step now to be taken. One man said that vote would be a turning point in Westminster’s history. While all this may very well be true, I am writing now to urge that whatever we do, we do together rather than as individuals.”56 He volunteered to serve as editor of a book on justification by faith. In the next several months, he would take the proposal further, providing the headings for nine chapters and approaching possible contributors and soliciting contributions. The idea was eventually dropped. At its February 1981 meeting, the board defeated a motion by trustee Donald Graham that Shepherd be dismissed with a year’s salary. The vote against was twelve to six. Reid wrote after this meeting: I have been giving a good deal of prayerful thought to the meeting last Thursday and what it portends for the future ... this means first of all that Westminster Theological Seminary has now permanently changed its doctrinal position. It has accepted Shepherd’s views on baptism, election and justification, all of which is much closer to Trent than to either Dort or Westminster. As far as I can see this means that the Reformed position of Westminster has now been pushed aside, at least for the foreseeable future, if not forever. I am, therefore, faced with the question of whether I can any longer give any support to the seminary, either financially or for the purpose of encouraging students to go there. And on both counts I am afraid that the answer must be in the negative.57

Reid’s mood of despair and desperation at the time is the only explanation for his cooperation in one last ploy to reverse the outcome. A letter, dated 4 May 1981, and headed “Dear Friends of the Reformed Faith” was sent out to several hundred addressees58 from a Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, post box. There were two items enclosed: a two-

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page letter and a six-page attachment containing the 4 December 1980 appeal to the trustees to declare Shepherd’s views heretical. There were a series of names, forty-five signatories on the covering letter, a small postscript at the bottom signed by Cummings, Knudsen, Kuschke, and Reid, and fifteen on the enclosure. Though the post box in Jenkintown was soon traced to seminary librarian Arthur Kuschke, Reid appears to have immediately been targeted as the instigator, in spite of the fact that his unmistakable prose style is absent. The suspicion arose because Reid alone, it was felt, had the contacts that could enlist such an international galaxy of signatories and compile such a comprehensive mailing list.59 As a result of this perception he became an immediate pariah to many former friends. Most of the forty-five prominent Reformed pastors and teachers who signed the letter were Westminster alumni, or individuals who had a long connection with the seminary. It began: “We are responding to views, which have been recently advanced, that emphasize the believer’s good works as necessary for his justification. These and other problematic statements are being circulated and are causing confusion and division in the Reformed community. They raise critical doctrinal issues which must be resolved.” It went on to focus on the seminary: “Within Westminster Theological Seminary there has been a longstanding controversy as to whether the sinner is justified by faith with its works or by faith apart from its works.” It then referred to the decision of the trustees to exonerate a certain (unnamed) member of the faculty who held such views. It concluded: “We deplore this December 11th action. It is our conviction as trustees, faculty members, alumni and friends of Westminster Seminary and as members of the Reformed community, that this action makes it imperative for us to give a clear and unambiguous witness to the truth of the gospel of grace, for the good of Westminster Seminary and of the Reformed and evangelical community.”60 The reaction to the letter was instantaneous and dramatic. Particular exception was taken to that crucial sentence: “Within Westminster Theological Seminary there has been a long-standing controversy as to whether the sinner is justified by faith with its works or by faith apart from its works.” On 22 May 1981 Edmund Clowney wrote the entire seminary constituency challenging that assertion. “That statement is quite misleading. It implies that, here at Westminster, we have been uncertain as to whether faith must be supplemented by works to justify us. That is not true. No one here imagines that our works can be in any way the ground of our justification.”61 He went on to state categorically that “Westminster is committed to the Bible and to the Westminster Standards as a summary of Biblical teaching. One of our

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professors has indeed sought to find ways of stating more fully the teaching of the Bible that we must trust and obey.” Enclosed was the Westminster Statement on Justification, as written by the Committee of Five the previous year. Offered, on request, was a statement by Richard Gaffin, professor of New Testament and Shepherd’s strongest supporter on the faculty. At the trustee meeting several days later, President Clowney informed the board that the letter “had done incalculable and irremediable harm to Westminster Seminary.” On 28 May the faculty passed a unanimous motion to communicate to the signers of that letter “its repudiation of the method chosen by these men to advance their cause as contrary to the letter and spirit of the gospel in that it is designed to polarize rather than reconcile, as destructive of the peace and unity of the Westminster Seminary community, and as prejudicial to the truth concerning the views of the Seminary, the faculty, and Mr Shepherd, contrary to the ninth commandment.” Trustee Donald Graham, and a Reid supporter, responded: “The fact that you apparently are not willing to face or concede is that the minority in the trustees and those aligned with us had reached an impasse in our endeavours to gain the dismissal of Shepherd. What evidence was there that any further action would be taken in the Board?” And he went on to say: “I am sick and weary of the entire matter. Your hope can be that some of us will soon disappear. Now what bothers you is that a large section of the Christian world has been enlightened on the problem and that bothers you unto righteous indignation that to me is nauseous in view of all the facts.”62 Kuschke defended the faculty members involved: “We tried to explain that in humility our entire motivation was truth itself, as revealed in the gospel; and our hope, that together we should all seek to agree upon that truth and together to make it known.”63 A year later, in response to continuing faculty concerns that signatories of the letter had “done damage to the Seminary,” forty signatories of the letter stated again that the letter was “an expression of conscience out of concern for the gospel and the for the health of Westminster Seminary” that demonstrated “a higher loyalty in conscience to Christ and the gospel.”64 Ironically, at the very moment the 4 May letter appeared the Norman Shepherd case was coming to resolution. The May board meeting took Shepherd out of teaching the third-year systematics course (where the matter of justification by faith was included in the material taught) and authorized a further committee of three to see what action should be taken “to rectify the whole situation.”65 President Clowney, who according to Reid, appeared to “blow hot and cold on the matter,”66 was about to take a decisive action, as a

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result of the “joining and receiving” procedures then going on between the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church (Evangelical Synod), and the Presbyterian Church in America (pca). This threefold merger was very close to Clowney’s heart and something which he profoundly desired. In merger talks, it soon developed that the Orthodox Presbyterian Church was the real issue. Questions had been raised, particularly in the Presbyterian Church in America, about the orthodoxy of Norman Shepherd, his alleged views, his teaching, and his influence over ministerial candidates. Clowney promised the Presbyterian Church in America General Assembly a colloquium on justification by faith. Some of the theological heavyweights of the Reformed world, as well as Norman Shepherd, would be invited. It was scheduled for August 1981, but Norman Shepherd declined to attend and it was cancelled. The pca Committee requested a meeting with the opc delegation. This meeting was held on 6 March 1981, two months before the 4 May letter. The pca Committee was anxious, at the meeting, to explore the issue of justification by faith alone. On that committee, as moderator of the pca General Assembly, was Paul Settle, one of the trustees of Westminster Seminary opposed to Shepherd’s exoneration. On the opc committee was Norman Shepherd. As Reid had heard the story and reported to Philip Hughes, “They met to discuss the question of union but Paul Settle ... asked Norman about his theological position on justification. Norman flew off the handle and accused Settle of trying to bully him etc. and apparently the whole meeting more or less broke up with Settle declaring that he would oppose union with the opc until it got itself straightened out on the doctrine of justification.”67 According to another report – again from a source not favourably inclined to Shepherd68 – Shepherd stated that “he could not support the opc’s joining the pca if his distinctive views were to be attacked.” His minority report to the opc General Assembly in June recommended “that the opc respectfully decline the invitation extended by the pca to apply for membership in that denomination.” The motion to join received a narrow two-thirds vote (required for the merger to proceed) on a second ballot. The pca were as squeamish about the merger as the opc. The General Assembly, meeting later in June than its opc counterpart, heard an impassioned plea from Edmund Clowney, as a fraternal delegate, to plead that the pca issue its invitation to the opc in spite of the non-resolution of the “justification issue.” Westminster trustee Kenneth Ryskamp was moderator of the pca that year and, although he stated he had voted for Shepherd’s dismissal on more than one occasion, he still favoured the invitation for the opc to join. After a further plea from Edmund Clowney in which he stated the only issue was how

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Norman Shepherd expressed the doctrine of justification by faith, the invitation for the opc to join the pca was sent down to the presbyteries. Nine, including the Mid Atlantic Presbytery, which was the centre of Westminster Seminary’s strength in the pca, voted against the merger with the opc. Three-quarters of the presbyteries were needed to proceed so the motion failed. It was a sad defeat for Edmund Clowney. After he left the seminary’s presidency in 1984 he would resign from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, with which he had been affiliated since his ordination in 1942. He became a minister of the Presbyterian Church in America, serving in retirement first in Charlottesville, Virginia, then at Westminster West Seminary in Escondido, and finally in Houston, Texas. He has now returned to Virginia. During that summer Clowney listened to forty hours of Shepherd’s most recent classroom tapes and finally concluded that his views “differ from our Confessional standard and appear to threaten significant doctrinal positions.”69 He went on to state that Shepherd’s “views of the covenant as they are now being presented ... raise other issues that put the justification discussion in a broader setting.” If, in spite of his statement earlier in the summer to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, the “present crisis of confidence” was limited to “misunderstandings of Professor Shepherd’s views,” Clowney would be unable to recommend resignation or dismissal. Instead he found “views” that “differ from our Confessional standards.”70 Clowney’s critique focused on Shepherd’s view of the covenant and the idea, which had come out in the 1978 Downington Conference, that a person could lose his salvation. Norman Shepherd was clearly becoming more isolated. At the end of the summer of 1981, he called Stanford Reid to apologize for not having answered Reid’s questions in the faculty meeting in February 1977. Reid reported his response to Shepherd to one of the three members of the investigative committee.71 “I recognized his reply with another question as simply a debating technique with which I was determined not to be caught.” But while conceding that point graciously to Shepherd he was, nonetheless, adamant: “... his call did reveal to me that your committee seemed to be of the opinion that much of the opposition to Norman’s position was one of personality conflicts. With this, I must state categorically, I do not agree.” Once Clowney’s views were made public, matters proceeded rapidly. The executive committee of the board determined that Shepherd should first be suspended and then removed from his teaching position at the seminary. Clowney’s analysis of Shepherd’s views was discussed by the faculty. The faculty agreed to a motion Clowney endorsed,

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affirming that Shepherd’s views were not in conflict with scripture and the confessions. Both recommendations went to the board. On 20 November, by a vote of thirteen to eight, Norman Shepherd was dismissed from the faculty of Westminster Seminary. The thirteen votes were exactly what was required by the seminary charter for such an action. Thus ended one of the saddest episodes in both the history of the seminary and the lives of many, if not most, of the protagonists. But it was not all over. The executive committee was authorized to issue a “Removal Statement” to explain the reason for the board action and why the departure of Norman Shepherd was necessary for the best interests of the seminary. The board, it stated categorically, “makes no judgment whether Mr Shepherd’s views as such contradict or contravene any element in the system of doctrine taught by the Westminster standards.” The 25 November 1981 press release began with a reference to the 4 May letter and the trustees’ rebuke about the letter written by the forty-five. Even before reasons for Shepherd’s departure were given, it was noted those who signed the open letter had been asked “to consider the possible damage caused by the letter,” and its “one-sided allegations.” It created the impression for some that the 4 May letter was responsible for Shepherd’s dismissal, not the actual report given to the board by Clowney.72 The statement to the Westminster student body by President Clowney the day of the press release “stressed repeatedly” that Shepherd was within the bounds of Reformed orthodoxy while at the same time making “pointed criticisms” of those who had signed the 4 May letter.73 The press release seemed to some inconclusive, evasive, and defensive. Reid stated in a letter to Clowney shortly before he left for teaching duties in Australia: “I shall be quite frank in saying that I was astonished at the original set of charges prepared by the elective committee and put out in the press release, as they seemed to completely avoid the issue. I think that they have done far more damage to the seminary’s reputation than the 4 May letter which Gaffin and others are attacking so vigorously. After reading Aiken Taylor’s comments [as editor in the Presbyterian Journal], those in the res News Exchange and the Banner, I think that whole situation has been misunderstood.”74 It was Stanford Reid who was now blamed for the way in which the controversy had proceeded. A faculty meeting on 1 February 1982 placed his name along with other signatories to the 4 May 1981 letter on a separate list of visiting professors. None of those named received a reappointment to teach the following year.75 Reid wrote to one of the other “banned” visiting professors: “At the Board meeting, on a point

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of personal privilege, I raised the question of the faculty’s resolution barring all those who signed the letter of ‘the 45’on May 4/81 from again teaching at WTS.”76 He asked Clowney for clarification as to his status.77 In 1983 Reid’s name was coming up for renomination to the board of trustees, but he had had enough. At the very point where his struggle to clarify Westminster’s view on justification by faith had prevailed and Shepherd had left, for which he had campaigned for six years, Reid felt that his time at the seminary was over. He wrote to fellow trustee Calvin Cummings: “I am not sure if I sent you a copy of the letter [declining nomination as a trustee for a further term] I sent to Kingsley Elder, but I feel quite strongly that there is a danger of one hanging on to a position, when younger men should be brought in. I saw an uncle of mine do this in the Presbytery of Montreal and vowed that I would never be guilty of the same as I grew older. In fact, had it not been for the Shepherd case, I was planning to drop out when I reached 65, but when that broke I decided to hang on until that was settled, which I have done. At the same time, I cannot but conclude that I am persona non grata at the seminary.”78 Some at the seminary regretted Reid’s departure. To one such supporter he wrote,“Thank you for saying that you were sorry about my decision, but to be quite frank, I am just as glad to be out of it all. The fact that the faculty turned down the recommendation that I should be asked – unanimously agreed to by the History Department – indicates quite clearly that I would not be welcome on campus and would be in the same position as Hughes. Added to this I have a principal dislike of people as they get on in age, hanging on to things. I feel that a younger man might be better ...”79 Stanford Reid was able to use the perspective of an historian to bring closure. Later he told theological students in Australia: “When I was a member of the Board of Trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, suddenly we got word of theology being taught which was very definitely not in accord with the Reformed position. Those of us who had an historical background zeroed in on it immediately.”80 In a paper he gave on “Church History as a Reformed Theological Discipline” he wrote: “those who know the history of the doctrine [of justification by faith], who understand the conflicts which it has produced, and who have some understanding of the earlier answers which have been given to those who would undermine it, all this has caused no great problem. They can see that the church’s knowledge of the Scriptures has long ago made the opponents’ criticisms obsolete.”

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In the fall of 1986, en route to Florida, Stanford Reid deposited in the Westminster Seminary archives a full set of material, with correspondence, position papers, and board and faculty reports, in regard to “the Shepherd case.” It was as though he felt that he would ultimately be vindicated by what weighed the most with him: the verdict of history.81

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16 Church Union Redivivus, 1980–1984 Among Australia’s Continuing Presbyterians

It was both fortunate and fortuitous that Stanford Reid in retirement was able to move onto a new challenge that, as a senior citizen, kept his mind engaged and his gifts fully utilized. Invitations from the continuing Presbyterian Church of Australia, and the four journeys that followed between 1980 and 1984, represented, for the Reids, a coda to their active lives: an unexpected and harmonic conclusion. “Down Under,” Stanford Reid made a positive and valued contribution in completely new surroundings. Their Australian experience concluded happily his professional and ecclesiastical career. “We both look back to our times in Australia as one of the happiest times in our lives,” he would write after his final trip.1 Australian culture resonated with Stanford Reid. He could connect with its unique blend of aggressive, masculine self-confidence often masking internal self-doubt in the erstwhile colonial. The legendary Australian unwillingness to defer to authority, often attributed to its convict past, was likewise vintage Reid. He appreciated the mateyness, the easy camaraderie, the approachability of the theological students he taught. Never before had he had a similar systematic opportunity to be involved in hands-on instruction of students preparing for pastoral ministry. His success at the Presbyterian Theological Hall in Melbourne (later the Presbyterian Theological College) suggests what other institutions lost when he had been passed over. “Please give my best regards to the fellows I taught last year,” he wrote to his successor following his final term of instruction in Melbourne: “I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did. But you will have to be ready for all

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their humorous remarks and wisecracks. Don’t let them get away with anything or they will run all over you.”2 Since the 1960s, Stanford Reid’s counsel had been solicited by Presbyterians in Australia opposing merger with the Methodists and the Congregationalists. As an historian, a staunch confessionalist, and one brought up in the heat of the battle over Canadian Church Union, he was an obvious resource. For the second time, church union in Australia had been proposed. As they had in the 1920s, Australian antiUnionists were looking to Canada for help. The first Church Union debate had turned out differently than it had in Canada: the anti-Unionists prevailed. As with Presbyterians in Canada in 1875, following confederation in 1867, Australian Presbyterians had been organized into a single entity the same year as the formation of Australia in 1901. In Australia, however, the state General Assemblies preserved their independence and autonomy with the exception of matters relating to doctrine, training of candidates for the ministry, and the reception of clergy from other communions. As with Canada, denominational amalgamation was soon parlayed into the formation of a “distinctly Australian church,” bringing together various Protestant denominations. The debate over Church Union in Australia took the same course as in Canada, only slightly later, so that Australians, Unionists and anti-Unionists alike, learned from the Canadian experience. A Presbyterian Church Defence Association of Australia, created in 1919, mirrored the Canadian Presbyterian Church Association, which was established three years earlier in Canada. As one of Stanford Reid’s pupils at Guelph later noted, “because the Canadian plan of union was in advance of the Australian, the antiunionist forces in Australia were able to draw upon the experience of the Canadians and early on reached the elders and the people in the pews, while the pro-union movement was more elitist, composed of clergy and those in the larger city congregations.”3 Voting was completed in 1923 and it scuttled any move toward Church Union in Australia. Two years later the United Church of Canada was formed. “The ruinous results in Canada were a shock to our people’s moral sense here,” John Lawrence Rentoul, a leading Australian anti-Unionist, wrote in 1925 to J.W. MacNamara, head of the Canadian Presbyterian Church Association. Presbyterians from the Australian Church Defence Association extended “brotherly fellowfeeling amid their sore trials, sufferings and sacrifices, and heartfelt admiration of their splendid loyalty and their unfailing endurance and heroism.”4 It took two generations before Australian Presbyterians would debate Church Union again. In 1965 Trevor Pryce of Queensland

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wrote to Reid, citing booklets and other printed material being circulated that represented claims about the “great benefits” of the United Church of Canada. “Therefore in an attempt to sift ‘fact’ from ‘fiction’ I have decided to approach as many ministers, pastors or elders as possible.”5 Four years later, John J.T. Campbell of Campbelltown, New South Wales, head of the Westminster Society set up in 1950 “to preserve a Presbyterian witness,” wrote to Reid that “in Australia, many hope that the proposed union of the Presbyterian church with the Methodist and Congregational will provide an opportunity for faithful Presbyterians to continue as a Presbyterian church, but the danger is that many in it may not be evangelical or reformed, but, as someone has remarked, ‘the bagpipe and haggis brigade.’”6 By 1971 the Presbyterian Church of Australia legislation spelled out the rights of non-concurring minorities. As in Canada, Methodist polity gave that denomination no such option. The small Congregationalist denomination was divided, generally along theological lines. It all seemed familiar and predictable to Canadians who had gone through the 1925 disruption. By 1973 Samuel McCafferty of Ann Street Presbyterian Church, Brisbane, just back from the General Assembly, informed Reid that the Basis of Union had been accepted by a majority of seventeen, with a majority of the state Assemblies voting in favour and presbyteries by a vote of forty to thirteen.7 He reported that a Presbyterian Church Association had been formed in every state to “defend and maintain Presbyterian doctrines according to the Word of God.” “We are of a mind that where we cannot rely on a congregation to give the continuing church its whole hearted support we will not fight to retain it. We believe that if we can retain 600 congregations in the revote, the Unionists may accept this as enough for them to go into union in May 1974, although we know the Methodists won’t be happy at such a strong remaining church with central churches in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.” Reid responded by volunteering to go to Australia “to take part in the fight against church union. I do not wish to press myself upon you people, but if you feel that I could be of use, I could come out some time next summer.”8 On 4 January 1974, McCafferty extended a formal invitation to Reid to come to Australia for a nine- to ten-week visit. Maxwell Bradshaw, barrister, elder at Hawthorn Church, and procurator9 of the Victoria [state] Presbyterian General Assembly since 1959, concurred with the invitation. Bradshaw had been groomed from the 1930s “by several veterans of the 1920s church union battle and encouraged to pursue his legal studies in areas that would be of help to a continuing Presbyterian Church in the event of union.”10 He

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had been in correspondence “with the Presbyterian Church in Canada in order to familiarise himself with events that had taken place up to union.”11 He was to be a key player among anti-Unionists, not always helpfully. Bradshaw had friends and detractors. Some found him negative and power-seeking, his legalisms petty and distracting. Others described him as “unostentatious, warm-hearted and humble.”12 Reid was not able to follow up on his offer to go to Australia in the summer of 1974. “Things have cropped up since I last wrote you,” he wrote apologetically to McCafferty.13 An opportunity to travel to Australia would not come again for another five years. In the meantime Church Union was consummated 22 June 1977, and the anti-Unionists were busy regrouping. They had surprising strength in Victoria, and in New South Wales a majority of Presbyterians stayed out of the merger. State Assemblies continued in all states with the exception of Western Australia. There were more than 500 continuing Presbyterian congregations, with 60,000 members. In Victoria all the professors of the Theological Hall (located in Ormond College, the Presbyterian residential college at the University of Melbourne) were going to join the Uniting Church. Continuing Presbyterians in Victoria immediately took steps to arrange for theological education to continue on an interim basis from 1975. There were also theological schools for the training of clergy for the continuing church in Brisbane and Sydney. Robert Swanton became acting principal of what was then known as the Presbyterian Theological Hall in Melbourne.14 Allan Harman taught Old Testament a day a week, and there were other part-time faculty. Robert Swanton was a long-time friend of Stanford Reid’s through his work as editor of the Reformed Theological Review. He had been minister of Hawthorn Church, Melbourne, Maxwell Bradshaw’s home congregation, which (as Reid must later have observed) has an uncanny resemblance to the old Stanley Church in Montreal. Classes for the continuing seminary were originally held there until a property settlement allocated the Assembly offices on Collins Street for the continuing Presbyterians and classes moved there.15 As in Canada, motives for remaining Presbyterian in Australia were often mixed. The “haggis and bagpipe” group Campbell described were Scots nationalists who regarded the kirk and their ethnic inheritance as Scots as being coterminous. On Melbourne’s Collins Street the stately and wealthy Scots Church, next to the Assembly offices, remained Presbyterian and called a Canadian, Max Putnam of Kingston, Ontario, to be its minister.16 Putnam stayed only two years before he returned to Canada. As in 1925, anti-Unionists represented a wide spectrum theologically, though not as diverse as in Canada. Hector Harrison, minister of St Andrew’s Canberra, the so-called

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national “Presbyterian Cathedral,”17 described theologically as “a nineteenth century liberal,”18 was a staunch anti-Unionist who kept his congregation out of the Uniting Church by a second vote of sixty-seven per cent in 1973. Harrison grew nervous as the theological composition of the continuing church became apparent: he is reported as having had increasing “forebodings about the future” of the continuing church. A friend who entered union wrote: “Sorry you still have the fundamentalists – but I thought they would all remain with you.”19 The spectre of a so-called “fundamentalist” takeover of the continuing Presbyterian Church was regarded by some within as a real threat and by many without as a given. But the church that remained was, though to the right of its Canadian counterpart, by no means united theologically. Much would depend on the training of the newer clergy. Stanford Reid was being disingenuous when he wrote of the contrast between Canadian and Australian non-concurrents: “I only wish we had the same situation in Canada. Fortunately for them they lost practically all their so-called liberals to the uniting Church, while in 1925 in Canada a lot of the liberals and neutrals stayed in our church because of job opportunities etc. and have made quite a mess of the church since that time.”20 It was, in reality, more complex. The continuing Presbyterian Church in Australia has remained confessional and orthodox in its theological commitments. Stanford Reid played an important role as the denomination sought to establish its identity. He would bring his Canadian experience of Presbyterianism since 1925 to bear on the task. In January 1979, Bob Thomas, convener of the Christian Education Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Australia, called Stanford Reid from Sydney to inquire as to whether he would be willing to lecture during July of 1980 to a national denominational congress. It was, as Reid was quick to say, “an invitation which he was only too happy to accept.”21 The single conference was subsequently broken into three parts: first Victoria, then New South Wales, and finally South Australia. It was to be a significant opportunity for the minority group to find its theological identity after the disruption of 1977. Thomas phrased the question before the denomination: “How can a Church with severely limited resources make any impact on a materialistic and hedonistic nation?” He explained his choice of a speaker in glowing terms: “The Rev. W. Stanford Reid is well placed to assist us in this process. As a youth he saw his own church (The Presbyterian Church in Canada) divided over the church union issue in 1925.” On 10 June 1980, Stanford and Priscilla set off on an itinerary that would include, en route to Australia, visits to three Asian countries on the Pacific rim. Priscilla had not been in good health since the previous

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summer. It began with a flare-up of an old ulcer, which was followed by what turned out to be a stroke, originally diagnosed as “a circulatory problem to her head.” She showed considerable courage to make the journey. Their first stop-over was Japan, where Stanford lectured on John Knox at the Tokyo Union Theological Seminary, followed the next day with three lectures at Kobe Reformed Seminary. They went on to Seoul, Korea, where he spoke at Hap Tong Seminary and preached at the huge Han Sung Presbyterian Church. The Reids then went on to Taiwan, where he lectured at a conference at the Taiwan Theological Seminary outside Taipei. On 10 July they arrived in Melbourne, only to journey on immediately to Tasmania, where Stanford spoke at the historic St Andrew’s Church, Launceston. His friend Robert Miller had been minister there before his appointment the year before as church history professor in Melbourne. Back in Victoria, Reid kept a dizzying pace as guest of the Victoria General Assembly. The first evening, he spoke to the Flinders Presbytery. The following night, he was in Camberwell Church, addressing the three Melbourne metropolitan presbyteries. The next day in Geelong, he had a joint rally with both the Geelong and Kilnoorat Presbyteries. On Saturday he was with the Presbytery of Benalla. That evening at eight, Stanford and Priscilla took the flight to Sydney and he preached the next day. It was an exhausting itinerary. He was sixty-seven, Priscilla was seven-two. The lectures for which Reid had originally been invited began on Monday, 21 July, at the Assembly Hall in downtown Sydney. Stanford Reid addressed a congregation Priscilla described as “moderate in size but quite enthusiastic”22 with the first of five talks. The theme for the five evenings was “Look to the Rock,” based a verse from Isaiah chosen by the Congress Planning Committee: “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.” The prophet, Reid said, wanted Israel “to realise that they have not come from shifting sand, but from roots which have dug down deep into the soil, which are immovable and exemplary for them.” The application to the continuing church was obvious as it was hoped his talks would “turn it back to a deeper study of God’s Word, the Scriptures, and also in helping to give it an even clearer understanding of its own historic Presbyterian heritage.”23 The rock imagery suggested the unchangeable and non-negotiable aspects of faith. The church lives or dies by its confession of the faith founded on what Gladstone once called “the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture.” “And to the Reformed Church as a whole the Scriptures are the rock upon which it is founded. They are the primary standard of the Church’s doctrine and practice, the Church’s only basic rule of faith and action.”24 The second evening’s theme, the rock of faith in the

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person and work of Christ, referred to the Shepherd controversy, never far from Stanford’s mind. “Not long ago one Reformed theologian in the present writer’s hearing castigated those who believed in justification by faith alone, as those who preached cheap grace. Of course it is cheap – it is even free, for it is offered to all who believe and even provides the faith with which to receive Christ’s completed redemptive work.”25 On Wednesday, he continued with an emphasis on the church, bound by the rock of its confession of the Christ, the Son of the living God: “Sad to say, very frequently the opposition to the confession of the faith as set forth in the Scriptures has come from within the visible Church. Not infrequently individuals have gained places of power and influence in a denomination although they have taken their ordination vows, as one man put it, ‘with tongue in cheek.’”26 He concluded Thursday and Friday with familiar material. History, the “rock of our inheritance,” was an opportunity to address current issues in Canada and Australia. “History might well show us, when division and separation should take place and when it should not. So frequently today on one hand, people are urging unity for unity’s sake without consideration of doctrinal agreement; while on the other hand, others are leaving denominations, or being forced out, because they cannot accept some minor point of church government or practice. A proper consideration of the historical inheritance might help in this.”27 On the final night, Stanford struck the note of renewal. Reflecting on recent Canadian Presbyterian experience, he noted that “many Christians ... have become very despondent. They feel that everything has gone wrong ... the visible church is no longer effective, so they should separate from it and go off by themselves.” This, he cautioned, would be a mistake “God is still sovereign ... Christ is still King. And as He brought renewal and revival to the Church in the past, so He can and in His own good time will, bring revival and reformation to the contemporary Church.”28 The Reids left for Queensland, where he delivered six addresses and sermons in two days. The Brisbane Telegraph summarized one of them in the headline “Reformation Looms for Churches.” Reid, as described, was uncharacteristically optimistic about the future: “Churches throughout the world were on the verge of another reformation, a leading world authority on the 16th Century Reformation said in Brisbane this last week.”29 From Brisbane, they flew to New Zealand, where Presbyterians were also going through a possible denominational union. “It reminded me very much of the situation in our church before the consummation of union in 1925 when the unionists and the anti-unionists were carrying

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on a guerilla war, which one might call a sort of ‘monkey business,’”30 he wrote to a friend. “I lectured at Knox College, but I do not think that some of the faculty liked what I said as I criticized the episcopalian element who were trying to prove that Knox was really an Anglican.” After Stanford and Priscilla returned to Canada following “what has been probably the most interesting – and exhausting – trip of our lives,”31 Stanford counted up a total of fifty-four addresses given in the two months they had been away. “Although some had expressed doubts about Priscilla going because of her sickness last year, she had no problems and came through with flying colours.” In their Christmas letter they wrote: “We just thank God that we have had the health and strength to enjoy [1980]. The Orient trip was especially interesting and exciting, and we made many friends both there and ‘Down Under.’”32 Stanford had come home to news that the University of Guelph Historical Society had set up the Stanford Reid Scholarship. The recipient was to be an individual who, in addition to academic distinction, “has made a significant contribution to University or community life.”33 A suggestion had been made that the Reids might return to Australia the following year, this time to teach in the Sydney theological institution. All this was changed, however, by the sudden death on 23 June 1981 of Robert S. Miller, professor of church history at the Melbourne Presbyterian Theological Hall. Miller had been there for only three years. His loss was keenly felt by the whole church. Allan Harman, professor of Old Testament and soon to become principal, called Reid in Guelph in July and inquired as to whether he would be willing to be guest lecturer at the Hall in 1982. By the September meeting of the Theological Education Committee of the Victorian Church, Harman was able to report that all arrangements were in place for Stanford and Priscilla Reid to come in early February of the next year.34 Stanford was to teach two courses, Early Church History and Reformation, for a total of ten hours a week. Airfare for both Stanford and Priscilla would be included along with all living expenses while they were in Australia. Allan Harman had first met Reid while a graduate student at Westminster Seminary in 1960. Harman was to receive two graduate theological degrees from that institution: the Th.M. in 1961 and the Th.D. in 1965. The son of a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Eastern Australia, connected with the Free Church of Scotland, he had been trained, following undergraduate study in Australia, at the Free Church College in Edinburgh. He was called to teach Old Testament there but eventually returned to Australia to teach at the Reformed Theological College, Geelong. It was from that school that he was

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called in October 1977 to help re-establish the fledgling theological seminary of the continuing Presbyterian Church in Victoria.35 Harman threw his lot in with the continuing Presbyterian church and saw an opportunity to shape its direction and destiny. By going to teach at Harman’s invitation, Stanford Reid unwittingly found himself in the midst of competing interests, not unlike what went on at Presbyterian and Knox Colleges following Canadian Church Union. Harman had been joined at the Hall in January 1979 by Douglas Milne as professor of New Testament. Milne, originally Baptist, had joined the Free Church of Scotland. Some in the continuing church felt that Maxwell Bradshaw, whose former minister was now principal of the Hall, had brought in Harman and Milne to teach in order to maintain control of the institution. Instead of remaining outside the Victoria Presbyterian Church, as Bradshaw and others were thought to have anticipated, both were received as ministers of the denomination and subsequently played an active and responsible role in its affairs. As the Hall regrouped and appointments to faculty were made, some Victorian Presbyterians feared that the presence of two men coming from the Free Church would influence the Hall and the students trained there into too Reformed, perhaps even sectarian, a direction. Robert Miller, the third faculty member, had been a lifelong Australian Presbyterian, much loved and representative of a highly congenial and popular missionary-minded Reformed faith; his loss was felt keenly. As an outsider, appointed on an annual basis, Reid was both non-threatening and non-political, and provided an outside perspective based on years of experience in Canada. Diplomacy had not always been known as one of his more prominent skills, but in the years he was in Australia he was able to form close friendships right across the spectrum of personalities in the continuing church and help stabilize the regrouping denomination, providing both wisdom and common sense. His contribution would be significant as the church established its new identity. On New Year’s Day 1982 Priscilla Reid wrote in her diary: “God has been good to us. Now we have entered a new year and our immediate concern is preparing for our trip to Australia. Stanford has been working on his church history lectures. It has been really difficult for him too, considering that it is years since he last made a systematic study of the subject. However, he is almost finished now. The preparation has given him great satisfaction because he has not only reviewed the subject as it was forty years ago, but he has added to his knowledge by studying in depth the advances that have been made recently and the current literature.”36

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Nine days after the tempestuous 11 February Westminster Seminary board meeting, they flew via Vancouver to Melbourne.37 They were delighted to be met at the airport by three close friends: Rev. Graham Lyman, his wife, Beth, and Allan Harman. Lyman at the time was minister of the Reservoir Church. Two years later, he would move to Hawthorn Church where Robert Swanton had been minister and Maxwell Bradshaw had been a leading elder.38 On their previous visit, the Reids had become good friends with Graham and Beth and their lively family, finding father and daughter congenial fellow punsters. “Stanford,” Graham would recall, “was a breath of fresh air, joining together the love of words, paintings, history and ecclesiastical integrity.”39 Allan and Mairi Harman were next door and Stanford and Priscilla bonded with them. Allan recalls long conversations as Stanford unburdened himself about the struggles and disappointments of a life-time. It was a healing and restorative time. The Reids were driven from the airport to the home that the Hall had provided, 47 Kent Road, Surrey Hills, one of three adjacent properties owned by the denomination. “We were very tired and our system was off,” Priscilla wrote, “in fact the first week was spent trying to reorient ourselves to the southern hemisphere. Tired as I was, I was filled with delight when I saw the great variety of rose bushes all in bloom.” The Harmans took the Reids along to the local Surrey Hills Presbyterian Church. The congregation had just called David Innes from the Orkney Islands. David’s twin brother, Frank, had been assistant warden at Douglas Hall at McGill twenty-four years earlier. Even in distant Australia, there were links with the past. Stanford Reid was asked to provide the opening lecture for the term. After some discussion with Harman, he chose as his title “Church History As Our Heritage.”40 The denominational records state that on 1 March “before a large and appreciative audience the Rev. Emeritus Professor W. Stanford Reid of the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, delivered the inaugural lecture.”41 Reid pointedly asked the question: “How on earth are you going to know anything about the present situation of your church if you don’t know anything about its background?”42 Under the typical Reid threefold heading, he analysed church history as a heritage of teaching, a heritage of action, and a heritage of confession. At the end of his talk, he returned to the question raised at the beginning: “Why study church history at all?” Quoting Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun,” he suggested that the past helps us anticipate what will come, and further, church history is basic because it is the study of Christ’s rule, and in it we see how Jesus as Lord has ruled over the church. The forces of unbelief have sought to overwhelm the church and stifle its preaching. But at the

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same time, church history is an encouragement, reminding us not only of how demonic forces have failed but also of how the church has overcome the world. “What we should do is become better acquainted with the history of the church that it may encourage us, strengthen us, and build us up in our knowledge of the Scriptures and of the doctrines of the gospel of God. And all as a result of the moving power of God’s Holy Spirit.” In 1982 there were eight full-time theologs and four part-time ones at the Hall, an improvement over the two full-time and three part-time students with which the school had restarted seven years earlier. The college was now housed in the Presbyterian Assembly Hall in downtown Melbourne, on Collins Street, not far from the Scots Church. Stanford would take the twenty-two-minute train ride into Flinders Street Station four days a week and lecture on early church history and on the Reformation. The schedule called for him to teach Tuesday and Thursday from eleven to one and two to three. Wednesdays and Fridays were lighter: eleven to one. “Stanford looks tired when he returns in the afternoon and is so happy to be able to relax in a pleasant area,” Priscilla reported in her diary.43 Throughout their stay she struggled with ill health, but they maintained a full social life, entertaining students in their home as they always had.44 The students were older than the Reids had been used to in Canada, not surprising for a postgraduate institution. Many had come from professional careers. They were warmly appreciative of the Reids’ hospitality and appeared to value Stanford’s sense of humour, generally described as “corny.” Stanford spoke widely and provided counsel to many. One man later recalled: “In 1982 I was a newish minister in an isolated rural town in southern New South Wales and heard about a forthcoming visit by Dr Reid to a city about two hours drive away. Dr Reid’s talk and conversation were most helpful. We Australian Presbyterians had gone through a church union in 1977 and as a rebuilding continuing church, were largely staffed by young ministers whose zeal was not matched by the wisdom of experience (such as myself). Dr Reid both encouraged us to persevere in what was an uncertain and difficult environment. He also gave us many warnings, drawn from the post union experience in Canada. His words have proved remarkably perceptive. We were grateful for his visit – both that such an eminent figure considered us worth the long trip down under, and for his words.”45 On 6 May 1982, the final day of lectures, the students and faculty gave the Reids luncheon and made a presentation with many warm tributes. The Lymans took them out to a Chinese dinner. On the way back to Canada they stopped off in Sydney. Bob Thomas, who had originally invited them to Australia back in 1980, met them at the air-

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port: Stanford was to give a half-hour devotional to the New South Wales General Assembly, which he titled “Turning Points in the Acts of the Apostles.” He wrote to Graham and Beth Lyman his impressions: “the General Assembly, was particularly interesting as I could see the same maneuverings which go on in our Canadian assembly also.” Priscilla “was particularly interested in the part played by women in the Church, which is much more like what our Church followed before [the Women’s Missionary Society] came completely under the control of the Board of World Mission. Mrs Clements, the president is a strong leader. She will be a great help to her husband who has just been installed as the new moderator of the General Assembly.”46 In 1991 the Australian General Assembly would bar any further ordinations of women to the ministry.47 Stanford and Priscilla Reid left on 15 May for Toronto. On their return to Guelph, Stanford received a letter of appreciation from the clerk of the New South Wales Assembly, James Mullan: “Thank you for all the help you have given our Australian Church through these troublous years.”48 Almost immediately an invitation came from Melbourne for Stanford Reid to teach the next year. He responded favourably and, on hearing the news, Allan Harman wrote, saying: “Everyone is delighted and we all look forward to it.”49 The 1983 course load would be reduced to eight hours from ten, four for each course, Early Church History and Scottish and Presbyterian History. The latter was offered to second and third year students, who were to learn from Reid “Scottish History from the Reformation onward, some mention of Presbyterianism in the rest of the U.K., and in whatever time is available some lectures on Canada and U.S.A.”50 It was a demanding assignment. On 20 February 1983 the Reids arrived in Australia for their third visit. The inauguration service that year was held in Scots Church Hall on a humid night. Iain Murray, founder of the Banner of Truth Trust, who was serving a Presbyterian Church in Sydney at the time, was the invited speaker. Stanford reported to a friend in Canada: “At the present time I am quite busy as I am lecturing eight hours a week, besides giving other papers at various meetings and also having quite a social time with friends whom we made last year when we were out here. Also, the weather has been unbearably hot with temperatures at time up to 40 degrees Celsius which makes life rather difficult ... I have had her ladyship in bed most of the week.”51 On 15 April he gave the annual John G. Paton address at the South Yarra Church on “Calvin’s Geneva As a Missionary Centre.” “There are many,” he stated, “who hold that John Calvin was not interested in missions...People often fail to recognise that Calvin was a missionary statesman. He could see the

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importance of spreading the Gospel, and he maintained a pastoral ministry as he corresponded with missionaries.”52 A week later, 30 April 1983, they returned to Canada. Stanford immediately both preached a sermon and delivered a paper at a Scottish Heritage conference in Guelph. Then he and Priscilla travelled on to Wheaton College in Illinois for a month. Stanford’s schedule of lecturing there (two courses, two hours each a day, five days a week for five weeks) made him appreciate the care with which the Australian lecturing load had been paced. “This is the heaviest load I have ever carried and even surpasses the Australian programme. I was sort of backed into it, and did not realize what the programme was until I arrived here. However, it is all finished now. The students seem to have enjoyed the courses, and presented me with a book at the last class yesterday.”53 But there was more difficulty with Priscilla’s health. She fell in the house where they were living, breaking her heel bone and damaging her Achilles tendon. She was put into a cast, which made movement difficult, and there was a lot of pain. Stanford reported: “The doctor says it may take a year before it is all back to normal.”54 Then seventy-five, she never regained full health. A frail Priscilla Reid accompanied her husband on the third and final year in Melbourne. They arrived on 24 February 1984. This time the inaugural lecture was given by Sir Marcus Loane, past Archbishop of Sydney, on a subject congenial to Reid: “Our Primary Debt to the English Reformation.” Seminary enrollment had grown, his reputation had been established in Australia, and there was a recognition that, with Priscilla’s health, there might be no further opportunity to hear him lecture. Fourteen enrolled in his Reformation class and nine in the early church history lectures. “The bunch in Reformation I have had before and we have quite a time as they are all jokers and try to catch me out if they can. The men in the early church are also quite humorous, and also hard workers.”55 During his final visit to Australia Reid was asked by the Hall to address a significant issue. As a man who had spent a life-time teaching history and was now an instructor in church history he was asked to explain how the two subjects differed. In a lecture at the Hall on 28 February 1984,56 he replied that the two disciplines were indeed one and the same, using identical methodology. The only difference was that church history enabled us to place the church in the context of world history. Christ is the Lord of history, and the church is the special field of God’s activity. Having said that, however, he added a quick caveat: would-be preachers should not make simplistic analogies. The pulpit was no place for moralistic applications drawn from a dubious understanding of complex historic process. He cautioned against ever

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attributing an event directly to divine intervention, because there is no definitive revelation on the matter and the canon is closed. What we should do, he insisted, “is become better acquainted with the history of the church that it may encourage us, strengthen our faith, build us up in our knowledge of the Scriptures and the doctrines of the gospel of God. All this as a result of the moving power of God’s Holy Spirit.”57 A testimonial dinner was held on 13 April 1984 as “an expression of the church’s gratitude for their services,” and they returned to Florida on 3 May to collect their car and make their way north. It would be their final trip to Australia: a difficult and challenging time lay ahead, particularly for Priscilla, at seventy-six in precarious health. For the next decade, Stanford Reid would maintain links with the Australian church as a correspondent and confidant. One of his direct links was through a graduate student at Guelph, Stewart Gill, whom he recommended to the Hall to teach church history. Gill had written a doctoral thesis on William Proudfoot, an early Canadian pioneer minister. As the appointment procedures progressed, Reid had advice for Gill about adapting, as a Scot, to Australia. “The Australians generally are very self-confident and not very much interested in criticism, especially from those who come from without the country – especially the British Isles.”58 When the announcement was made on 2 October 1984 that Gill was to be lecturer in church history at the Hall, it was apparent Reid was reliving and savouring his Australian experience through his student. “I envy you your opportunity, as I think you will find it a very interesting, even exciting experience.”59 He promised his notes on the courses he had taught in Melbourne and gave advice on how he had handled the material and conducted the classes, and what had been his course requirements. “May God bless you both very richly in the work of building up the Reformed cause and the Presbyterian Church in Australia,” Reid wrote Stewart and Heather Gill on their arrival at the beginning of the 1985 academic year.60 The Gills came to Australia at a difficult time in the life of the church. The 1984 Victoria General Assembly exposed fissures within the continuing Presbyterian Church in Australia. Reid expressed himself anxiously to David Innes: “I know what division did to our church after the union of 1925, and I do hope and pray that you will be able to overcome these difficulties.”61 Feelings in Australia were running high when he corresponded with Gill: “It is certainly too bad that all this is taking place, when the church could be helped so much by a sense of unity.”62 Following a visit to the Reids’ Florida home by the Harmans in December 1986, he wrote: “I do not understand what has

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happened in what seemed to be a pretty united type of organization.”63 Letters flew back and forth between Guelph and Reid’s friends in Australia. He wrote to one: “I am not in the battle, and I really have no right to say much on the subject.”64 Stanford Reid’s growing preoccupation with Priscilla’s health meant that the Australian Church increasingly receded into the background. He did congratulate Allan Harman in 1989 when he became moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Victoria. By 1990 his letters were shorter and he was sounding like an old warrior. “The people over to the right who are fundamentalist types can be difficult as I know from personal experience. Battling the liberals is something one can take for granted [but] having a fight with the pietists, I have always found a bit more difficult. The Reformed position is not particularly popular on either side.”65 Three years before he died, as he was about to be operated on for cancer, he wrote poignantly: “I often think of how much we enjoyed our trips to Australia where we might have stayed if we had been somewhat younger.”66 Stanford and Priscilla’s Australian experience opened a whole new horizon for them in the final active decade of their lives. Stanford Reid’s contribution to the continuing Presbyterian Church in Australia, based on a lifetime in the post-Union Presbyterian Church in Canada, confirmed his lifelong position as a Reformed confessionalist. The unfolding Australian experience made him realize the uncertainties of any Christian community remaining true to the faith without being tested, particularly when it goes through loss and disruption. The Presbyterian Church in Australia seemed to have avoided many of the ambiguities of the continuing Canadian Presbyterians, but even “down under,” in what might have been seen from a distance as an ecclesiastical Eden, perils lurked and misunderstandings arose. It was in the students of the Presbyterian Theological Hall that Reid saw a bright and promising future. And those men were the ones he influenced and who, when the post-Union history of their church is written, will give him an honoured place.

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17 Lengthening Shadows, 1989–1996 Coping With Age, Blindness, Loneliness

In March 1992, at the age of seventy-nine, Stanford Reid wrote an article titled “Loneliness and the Christian.” He claimed that, of everything he had ever written, this essay received the most response. The reason for that reaction was obvious: it was not only the closest thing to autobiography he had ever penned, it was also Stanford Reid at his most vulnerable and self-revealing. “When my wife was confined to a nursing home, I experienced a deep sense of loneliness. I have also encountered a number of men and women in our church having difficulty in dealing with their loneliness. Loneliness is not unusual. It is far more common at all levels of society than we realise. While lonely people often do not want to reveal their feelings, their loneliness frequently becomes obvious. Christians should not ignore loneliness.” He was speaking from the heart: “Through my recent experience, I discovered how painful loneliness can be.” And then the application: “The Christian message calls Christians to reach out to the lonely. Only as we love our neighbours as ourselves can we help them. In these acts we can be confident of the presence of the Holy Spirit who will encourage us and them.”1 The saga of Priscilla’s deteriorating health dominated their final years of life. During their final trip in Australia, he had written about “my wife’s usual attack of bronchial asthma ... she has been in bed for over ten days with it ... “2 On their return to Florida in the winter of 1985, the situation worsened rapidly: “We are both keeping fairly well, although my wife’s eyes are causing her a lot of trouble, so we are going to see an eye specialist in a few days time.”3 The descent to

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blindness was rapid. Four weeks later he wrote, “my wife’s eyesight is deteriorating rapidly, and we only hope and pray that she will not go completely blind. The cause of the problem is the deterioration of the macula at the back of the eyes and also a threat of glaucoma which could also bring on blindness. She finds it very hard, as she always has been used to doing so much for herself, and now without the ability to read even her favourite recipes, she has to depend on my reading them to her. This not only destroys her own independence, but she also feels that it takes me away from my work, all of which is very disturbing.”4 And finally, three weeks further on, he wrote: “I am sorry to say that my wife’s eyes have completely gone. This morning she had to sign a couple of things and simply could not do it. She could neither read nor write.”5 By 1 April 1985, back in Guelph, he wrote “there is no cure to my wife’s problem ... she is legally blind.” Within weeks she was learning braille. Stanford continued to write book reviews, and he composed a chapter on Machen for Philip Hughes’ festschrift, reflecting both on Machen as the greatest influence in his life and on Hughes as his closest friendship. He spoke to an International Calvin Symposium in November 1985 on Calvin’s view of natural science, but he was not at his best. Priscilla’s ill health had taken its toll on him. The Montreal appearance was his last presentation at a scholarly conference. He still preached regularly, and they went down to Florida during the winter of 1987 for what would turn out to be the final time. Having sold their house there they moved into a rented apartment. Returning to Guelph, they relocated yet again to a unit on a single floor as a concession to Priscilla’s blindness. Stanford kept busy doing elder hostel lectures at the Presbyterian Crieff Hills Conference Centre outside Guelph. By early 1989 Priscilla was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. She was able to go to a celebration of their golden wedding anniversary hosted by Stewart and Barbara Reid and their daughter Jane at the nearby Elora Inn. Two months later, in October 1990, she collapsed with internal bleeding and was rushed into hospital. A week later, she had surgery for ulcers. She became disoriented because of her blindness and entered a nursing home “for a month so that she can be prepared to come back to our condo,”6 Stanford said bravely. But Priscilla never returned to him. As the 1990 holiday season approached, he wrote: “It will be the first time we have not spent Christmas together in 50 years!”7 In the summer of 1991 Stanford Reid was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was operated on in Toronto in October, stayed at a retirement home for a couple of weeks, and then returned to their apartment. He faced the challenge of clearing out the condo, selling his belongings and moving into senior citizens housing permanently. “I

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have been getting rid of my books and papers, articles which I never finished, and some unfinished books.”8 He would write in November of the following year: “I am not doing any research or writing ,”9 but Ronald Sunter, a colleague at the university, reported in early 1994, “Apart from his driving he is still the same old Stanford, still beavering away at papers.”10 Stanford was having continuing cancer treatments in Hamilton, and on 25 February 1994, he went to Henderson Hospital there for major cancer surgery. He put the condominium up for sale and entered the Stone Lodge nursing home. At Christmas 1994 he wrote, “I see [Priscilla] once a week and call her on the telephone twice a day. But I am finding her condition quite depressing.” His diaries for the final years centre around Sunday visits to St Andrew’s Church, Guelph, lunches with his friend Hugh Anderson, who would be his executor, and the daily call to Priscilla and the hope she might recognize his voice that day. By the end of October 1996, his writing trails off. On Saturday, 28 December, he passed away quietly in his sleep. The end came as a blessed release. When told of his death the next day, Priscilla responded: “I knew a man by that name once.” On Friday, 3 January 1997, at one in the afternoon in St Andrew’s Church, Guelph, over 300 friends, associates, fellow parishioners and family gathered for “A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life and Christian witness of Rev’d Dr Stanford Reid.” At the door greeting the mourners was Stewart Reid, Stanford’s brother. The service was conducted by the minister, Peter Darch, and the sermon was preached by Mariano DiGangi. As Reid would have liked, it was a simple service without adornment. Peter Darch had composed a special liturgy: We have come to acknowledge before God His gift to us of William Stanford Reid and to give thanks for his life and person. We remember Stanford with joy as a vital living presence in our lives and a good friend. We remember Stanford with pride as a man who approached all his work and all that he did with care. We remember him as a faithful servant of Christ who sought to integrate as much as he could his faith in Christ and his life at home, in the church, and in the academic world. We remember him as part of that network of relationships which enrich and give meaning to our lives.

Mariano DiGangi, who had known him since 1943, recalled the first part of Reid’s life, the Westmount and Montreal years. Darch spoke of visits to the Stone Lodge and of Stanford Reid’s words a month before

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his death, that he was “in the waiting room of heaven.” Reid had chosen the text for the funeral sermon. It was I Corinthians 4:1 and 2: “So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.”11 At the end, he was still reading his New Testament in the original, in a well-thumbed Greek text. Six months later Priscilla followed him. “In death they were not divided.”

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5 Epilogue

What will the verdict of history be on the historian W. Stanford Reid? This is a question that he reflected on frequently during the final years of his life. So much of what he left behind him seemed hurried, incomplete, unfinished. Manuscripts – some rejected by publishers, others incomplete – were piled up in the double room he shared at the end of his life with another nursing home resident. They were taken away by his executor and form a collection of papers and other documents still to be catalogued and sorted. He was anxious to preserve all of his personal papers. He left an impressive trail of them in various archival collections. At Westminster Seminary he deposited his considerable collection of papers and correspondence from the Shepherd case. At Guelph, in the collection he had helped build up, are to be found all his papers from his years at the university. Ironically, within the archives of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, box after box of material provides evidence of his complex relationship with his own church and its various agencies and its congregations. It is here that four scrapbooks preserve more than a half century of clippings, all carefully catalogued by his librarian wife. He not only left papers, letters, and memorabilia: he and Priscilla agreed on a trust that would continue their vision in the years to come. Without immediate family of their own, and after a lifetime of canny investing, he set up the Priscilla and Stanford Reid Trust. In Canada such a trust, especially given its purpose, is unusual if not unique. According to the terms of his will, the bulk of his considerable estate was “to be used for the purpose of Reformed and Presbyterian

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Theological education in Canada.” In the event that “an independent Reformed and Presbyterian Theological College or Seminary is established in Canada, at their discretion, they may turn over the said investments to that institution as an endowment.” As a further contingency the trustees were authorized “to use part of the estate, not to exceed 50% of the residue, to establish a Christian home for sick and suffering senior citizens in Guelph.”1 The will was remarkably short and the terms gave the five trustees considerable discretionary power, provided their operating expenses did not “exceed five per cent of annual income.” The will shows that, to the very end of his life, Stanford Reid maintained the vision of a theological institution specifically Presbyterian and committed to the Reformed faith as he understood it. He had left, in his voluminous writings, a clear indication of what he considered that faith to be. He was a Calvinist. He was not a pietist. He was a confessional Presbyterian, committed to a creedal statement of the faith that enshrines Calvinism as defined in the seventeenth century by the Westminster Confession of Faith. He was not a Biblical literalist, and certainly no fundamentalist. He had carved out a lonely niche for himself: a man who never felt truly comfortable in the mainstream, who was often a loner, but at the same time, paradoxically, a propagandist, a popularizer, even one might say, an entertainer. He could hold an audience, and his ripostes at ecclesiastical gatherings cut through the verbiage clerics so much enjoy. He was a layman’s minister, a defender of the person in the pew who was puzzled by church politics and anxious for direct dealing and common sense solutions. He opposed waste, cronyism, and professionalism. He was principled and committed. Careful with his money, meticulous in his accounting, he could be generous and giving when there was a cause he felt worthwhile. At the end, to ensure that the trust would have sufficient capital, he lived in cramped quarters, guarding his income as he accumulated additional funds for posterity. He had a soft heart, a pastoral commitment to those who sought his help. He provided to the very end weekly Bible studies for the residents of his nursing home, carefully typing his notes on small scraps of paper and cataloguing them in order to leave behind a complete record of all his homiletical material. His legacy, however, is more than papers, more than a trust fund that will perpetuate his vision. Throughout his life he was frequently ignored, minimized, ostracized, even rejected. Remarkably none of these experiences left him bitter or angry. His Reformed faith provided a ready antidote to this buffeting. He was continually going back to the themes of providence and the perseverance of the saints. His Calvinism

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was of a very practical and personal nature, gainsaying those who decry that theology as merely cerebral and intellectual. While he eschewed “piety,” at the deepest level he was a very pious individual. Indeed Stanford Reid was a person of paradoxes. Gruff on the outside, he was nonetheless warm and passionate with those who pierced the armour of his self-protection. He made Scotland his specialty, but he was half English. He could be sexist and chauvinist, but had a close and enduring relationship for over half a century with a vital, creative, and highly intelligent woman who was able to tone down his rhetoric, squelch his putdowns, and preserve her independence as an individual, guarding her own space. Part of the uniqueness of Stanford Reid was his presence in the secular university as an active and aggressively orthodox Christian whose apologia was unapologetic in a time when academia had been virtually surrendered by the evangelical community. He maintained that historians ignored the influence of evangelicals on Western civilization in the last two hundred and fifty years to their peril. He used humour, satire, and sometimes even cynicism to drive home his point that refusing to include the contributions of Christian social reformers, Christian philosophers, Christian politicians, and Christian ministers was to destroy one’s credibility as an objective historian. It is for his contribution to Scottish studies that he is probably best known. In the obituary in the Guelph Mercury, it was noted that he had “helped make the local university the renowned institution it has become.”2 It went on to cite his encouragement of the university’s “growing expertise in Scottish history” and his help in the “formation of its extensive Scottish archival holdings and interdisciplinary Scottish studies programme.” As his colleague Elizabeth Ewan stated in the Sixteenth Century Journal, “He will be sorely missed, not only by his colleagues, family, and the congregations of his churches, but by many North Americans interested in Scottish heritage. Thanks to his efforts, the study of Scotland continues to flourish in North America.”3 Stanford Reid’s life was always lived on two tracks: the academic and the ecclesiastical. Foiled in the one area, he went on to grace the other. Speculating on what he might have contributed to the life of the Presbyterian Church in Canada had he received the appointment in 1950 or the call in 1954 is pointless. But ultimately the church itself paid a high price for its exclusion. It lost an individual who might well have powerfully prepared it for the onslaught of secularism that so decimated its ranks in the final third of the twentieth century. What Stanford Reid fought for congregationally when he founded the Town of Mount Royal Church – a laity equipped to articulate a faith that provided an alternative to the easy and comfortable conformities of

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Christendom immediately after the Second World War – challenged the existing presuppositions of what a faith community should be. He stood for a creed that was confessional and by which the church would order its life. Open to change – he grew to accept the ordination of women and never made it an issue – he was anti-ecumenical only in the sense that when church union involved watering down its deposit of faith he felt a denomination had not only lost its identity, it had also lost its integrity. As an historian he valued the past and felt that one must be true to one’s heritage of faith to be authentic. To deny fundamental differences represented the ultimate dishonesty. In one of his final talks at the Stone Lodge, weeks before he died, he spoke about “the Christian’s changed outlook.” It was the credo of his life: “We see things from the perspective of a sovereign God. We are to use our gifts in our lives so that we manifest our obedience and love for God who has redeemed us through the incarnation of His Son.” Nothing could better describe the years of struggle and service of William Stanford Reid.

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appendix Bibliography of the Writings of W. Stanford Reid

1936 1941 1942 1943

1944

1945

1946

The Church of Scotland in Lower Canada, Its Struggle for Establishment. Toronto: Presbyterian Publications, 1936. Review of History as the Story of Liberation, by Benedetto Croce. Westminster Theological Journal 4, no. 1: 80–5. “The Lollards in Pre-Reformation Scotland.” Church History 11: 3–16. “Scotland and the Church Councils.” Catholic Historical Review 29, no. 1. “Scottish Disruption and Reunion, 1843–1929.” Christendom. (Summer): 318–29. “The Christian Theistic Philosophy of Law and Jurisprudence.” Westminster Theological Journal 6, no. 1:19–41. “The Douglases at the Court of James I of Scotland.” Juridical Review 58: 77–88. “The Origins of Anti-Papal Legislation in Fifteenth Century Scotland.” Catholic Historical Review 29, no. 4: 3–27. “Lutheranism in the Scottish Reformation.” Westminster Theological Journal 9, no. 1: 91–111. “The Papacy and the Scottish War of Independence.” Catholic Historical Review 31: 282–300. “The Scottish Counter-Reformation before 1560.” Church History 14: 104–25. “An Early French-Canadian Pension Agreement.” Canadian Historical Review: 291–4.

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“The Place of Denmark in Scottish Foreign Policy, 1470–1540.” Juridical Review 60: 183–98. “The Presbyterian Church in Canada 1. Historical Background.” The Presbyterian Guardian (10 May 1946): 133–4, 141–2. “The Presbyterian Church in Canada 2. Developments Since 1925.” The Presbyterian Guardian (25 June 1946), 179–80, 189–91. Review of Jehovah’s Witnesses, by Herbert H. Stroup. Westminster Theological Journal 8, no. 2: 206–11. “The Habitant’s Standard of Living, on the Seigneurie Des Mille Îles, 1820–50.” Canadian Historical Review: 266–78. “The Middle Class Factor in the Scottish Reformation.” Church History 16: 137–53. Review of The Story of the Faith by William Alva Gifford. Westminster Theological Journal 9, no. 1: 233–7. “Clerical Taxation: the Scottish Alternative to Dissolution of the Monasteries, 1530–1560.” Catholic Historical Review 35: 129–53. “Robert Barton of Over Barnton, A Scottish Merchant of the Sixteenth Century.” Medievalia et Humanistica 2: 46–61. “The Ecumenism of John Calvin.” Westminster Theological Journal 11, no.1, 30–43. “The Church in Great Britain,” Presbyterian Record September 1947, 200. “A Sixteenth Century Marriage Contract between Sir James Sandilands of Calder and Robert Barton of Over Barnton.” Scottish Historical Review 28: 58–62. “What Was the Protestant Reformation?” Reformation Today 1, no. 2 (November 1951): 3–5, 17. Review of The Brethren of the Common Life by Albert Hyma. Westminster Theological Journal 14, no. 1: 91–6. “The New Testament Belief in an Old Testament Church.” Evangelical Quarterly 24, (15 October 1952): 194–205. “The Christian Concept of Social Justice.” Westminster Theological Journal 15, no. 1: 1–10. “What Price Ordination Vows?” Reformation Today 1, no. 4 (January 1952): 9, 12–13. “Christianity: Grim or Smiling,”Reformation Today 1, no. 5 (February 1952): 11–12. “The King Is Dead.” Reformation Today 1, no. 5 (February 1952): 2–3, 19.

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1954

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“Church Union Foundations,” editorial, Reformation Today 1, no. 6 (April 1952): 10. “Creed or Confusion,” editorial, Reformation Today 1, no. 7 (May 1952): 10–11. “Does Ecumenicity Mean Church Union?” Reformation Today 1, no. 8 (June 1952): 11. “The Sovereignty of God.” Reformation Today 2, no. 1 (November 1952): 13–16. “The Inn-Keeper’s Memories.” Reformation Today 2, no. 2 (December 1952): 14–16. “The Sin of Vagueness.” Reformation Today 2, no.4 (February 1953): 6–8. “Reformation in a Day?” Reformation Today 2, no. 7 (May 1953): 11–12. “The Coronation Is Over,” editorial, Reformation Today 2, no. 9 (July-August 1952): 11–12. “The Great Antithesis.” Reformation Today 2, no. 10 (September 1953): 4–6. “The Ecumenical Movement: Its Origins and Aims.” Reformation Today 3, no. 1 (November 1953): 14–16. “The Turning Point of History.” Reformation Today 3, no. 2 (December 1953): 2–5. “The Stone of Scone: Fact or Fiction?” Dalhousie Review 33: 50–9. Review of A History of Christianity by K.S. Latourette. Westminster Theological Journal 16, no. 2: 205–10. “The Covenant Interpretation of Culture.” Evangelical Quarterly 26, (15 October 1954): 194–209. “The Ecumenical Movement and Christian Doctrine.” Reformation Today 3, no. 3 (January 1954): 52–4. “The Scottish Evangelical Disruption,” Reformation Today 3, no. 4 (February 1954): 75–6. “How Shall We Deal With Russia?” Reformation Today 3, no. 4 (February 1954): 76–8. “Calvin and the Founding of the Academy of Geneva.” Westminster Theological Journal 18, no. 1: 1–33 Economic History of Great Britain. New York: Ronald Press, 1954. Problems In Western Intellectual History Since 1500. Montreal: McGill University, 1954. Revised edition, 1958. Republished 1968, Guelph University. “Trade, Traders and Scottish Independence.” Speculum 29: 210–22.

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Review of The History and Character of Calvinism by John T. McNeill. Westminster Theological Journal 17, no. 2: 175–180. “The Psychology of Conversion.” Evangelical Quarterly 28 no. 1: 33–42. “The Reformation and the Common Man.” Christianity Today 1, no. 2 (29 October 1956): 3–4, 17. Review of An Historian’s Approach to Religion by Arnold Toynbee. Westminster Theological Journal 19, no. 2: 224–7. “Calvin’s Interpretation of the Reformation.” Evangelical Quarterly 29 (January–March 1957), 4–22. “The Christian in the World: A Facet of Calvin’s Thought.” Gordon Review 3: 52–61. “Christianity and the Sense of Tragedy.” Christianity Today 1, no. 12 (18 March 1957): 3–5. “The Body Christ Heads.” Christianity Today 1, no. 22 (19 August 1957): 11–12. “Review of Current Religious Thought.” Christianity Today 1, no. 1 (14 October 1957): 39. Review of All Ye That Labor by Lester DeKoster. Westminster Theological Journal 20, no. 1: 115–17. Review of Society of the Future by H. van Riessen. Westminster Theological Journal 20, no. 2: 185–7. “Christianity and Scholarship.” Westminster Theological Journal. 21, no. 1: 1–18. “A Reformed Approach to Aesthetics.” Evangelical Quarterly 30, no. 4: 210–19. “The Protestant Reformation: Third Dimension in Western Civilization.” Gordon Review 4, no. 1 (Spring 1958): 8–13. “The English Stimulus to Scottish Nationalism, 1286–1370.” Dalhousie Review 38, 189–206. “The Age of Anxiety: A Call To Christian Action.” Christianity Today 2, no. 22 (18 August 1958): 3–4. “The Genevan Revolution.” Evangelical Quarterly 32, no. 2: 66–78. “Christians and the United Nations.” Christianity Today 3, no. 19 (22 June 1959): 10–12. “Scots and the English Wool Staple Ordinance of 1313.” Speculum 34: 598–610. “The Settlement of a Canadian Seigneurie (1760–1855).” The Educational Record of the Province of Quebec 85: 118–23. “The University’s Societal Task.” Free University Quarterly (Amsterdam) 6: 253–61.

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“John Calvin in America.” Gordon Review 5: 142–54. “Historical Materialism: Empirical or Metaphysical?” Gordon Review 5: 35–46. Review of Doctrines of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers by Thomas Torrance. Westminster Theological Journal 23: no. 2, 246–51. “Vatican Diplomacy: A Study of Church and State on the International Plane.” Review of Robert A. Graham Vatican Diplomacy. Christianity Today 4 no. 21 (18 July 1960): 35–6 [883–4]. “After Four Hundred Years,” Presbyterian Comment 1, no. 1 (January 1960). “The Scottish Reformation.” Addresses to the Synods of the Maritime Provinces and Toronto and Kingston, pcc, October 1960. “Sea-Power in the Anglo-Scottish Wars, 1296–1328.” The Mariner’s Mirror 46: 7–23. “Secret of the Scottish Reformation.” Christianity Today 4, no. 15 (25 April 1960): 7–9 [607–9]. “Genevan Revolutionary.” Evangelical Quarterly 32 (April–June 1960), 66–78. “The Scottish Reformation.” Review of J.H.S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland. Christianity Today 5, no. 9 (30 January 1961), 31 [371]. “Historical Factors in the Development of Canadian Nationalism.” Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 85: 118–23. “Absolute Truth and the Relativism of History” in Christian Perspectives 1961. Hamilton, on: Guardian Publishing, 1961,: 89–129. “The Christian and the Scientific Method.” Westminster Theological Journal 24, no. 2: 175–80. Review of Plain Mr Knox by Elizabeth Whitley. Westminster Theological Journal 24, no. 2: 278–80. “Evangelical Defeat by Default.” Christianity Today 6, no. 7 (5 January 1962): 27–28 [331–2] Review of Bishop and Presbytery: The Church of Scotland, 1661–1688 by Walter Foster. Canadian Journal of Theology 8 (January 1962): 65–6. Skipper from Leith, The History of Robert Barton of Over Barnton. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962. ed., “In The Unity of Faith” Some comments on the position of Presbyterian Church in Canada in the modern Ecumenical

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Movement. Privately published. “Whither the Presbyterian Church in Canada?” 21–4. “Presbyterianism in Jamaica.” Presbyterian Comment 2, no. 7 (February 1962): 1–2. “Lessons for Our Times: The Long Roots of the Reformation.” Christianity Today 7, no. 1 (12 October 1962): 30–2 [30–2]. “Do We Need Two Theological Colleges?” Presbyterian Comment 2, no. 7 (February 1962): 3. “The Millennial Kingdom” paper delivered to the Montreal Theological Society, 12 February. Review of Man As Churchman by Norman Sykes. Westminster Theological Journal 25, no. 1: 51–4. Review of Varieties of Christian Apologetics by Bernard Ramm. Westminster Theological Journal 25, no. 2: 180–3. “The Reformation: A Rediscovery of Grace.” Review of The Reformation: A Rediscovery of Grace by William Childs Robinson. Christianity Today 7, no. 2 (26 October 1962): 42–7 [98–9]. “Bultmann Encounters the Orthodox.” Christianity Today 7, no. 23 (30 August 1963): 39 [1139]. “Knox’s Attitude to the English Reformation.” Westminster Theological Journal 26, no. 1: 1–32. “News: Asking for a Rebirth.” Christianity Today 7, no. 24 (13 September 1963): 32–3 [1192–3]. “Natural Science in 16th Century Calvinistic Thought.” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 1: iv, 2, 305–19. “Sea Power in the Foreign Policy of James IV of Scotland.” Medievalia et Humanistica 15: 97–107. Review of The Vindication of Liberal Theology, A Tract for the Times by Henry P. Van Duesen. Westminster Theological Journal 24, no. 2: 169–72. “Contemporary Protestant Dilemma.” Christianity Today 8, no. 8 (17 January 1964): 13–4 [355–6]. “The Next Ten Years: A Panel of Fifteen Prominent Religious Scholars Forecasts.” Christianity Today 9, no. 1 (9 October 1964): 44 [44]. “Why Be A Presbyterian?” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 5 (August 1964 ): 1, 3. “Threat to Presbyterianism in Formosa?” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 2 (February 1964): 3. “Advertising Coffin Nails.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 2 (February 1964): 3.

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“That Nasty Bigot John Knox.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 5 (August 1964). “Church Union and Church Uniformity.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 8 (August 1964): 3. “Sacramental Unity In Mission.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 8 (August 1964): 3. “Our Debt to John Calvin,” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 6 (October 1964). “International Reformed Conference: Zeist 1964.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 6 (October 1964). Review of The Church and the Reality of Christ by John Knox. Westminster Theological Journal 27, no. 1: 42–5. Review of Christianity on the March by Henry P. van Duesen. Westminster Theological Journal 27, no.1: 81–4. Calvin and Tradition. Redhill, Surrey: Sovereign Grace Union, 1965. “Calvinism in Sixteenth Century Historiography.” Philosophia Reformata 30: 178–97. “The Power of the Reformation Today.” International Reformed Bulletin, nos. 20/21/22, Jan/Apr/July 1965: 37–49. “The Christian Professor in the Secular University.” International Reformed Bulletin no. 23 (October 1965): 5–13. “The Greatest Revival Since Pentecost” Christianity Today 10, no. 2 (22 October 1965): 15–8 [79–82]. “Michel-Sidrac Dugué de Boisbriand,” Canadian Dictionary of Biography, vol I, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965, 295. “The Laughter of God.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 12 (October 1965): 1, 4. “Elections Again.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 12 (October 1965): 2. “Rome’s New Face.” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 12 (October 1965): 2. Review of Observed in Rome, by Robert McAfee Brown. Westminster Theological Journal 28, no. 1: 97–9. “The Historical Implication of Christianity.” Evangelical Quarterly 38, no. 1: 68–81. “Draft Statement of Faith and the Problem of Authority.” Presbyterian Comment 6, no. 4 (September 1966): 1, 2. “John Cook and the Kirk in Canada” in Neil Smith, ed., Enkindled by the Word: A Biographical History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Toronto: Presbyterian Publications, 1966: 19–30.

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“The Future Course,” Presbyterian Comment 6, no. 4 (September 1966): 4. “A New Confession for the Church?” Presbyterian Comment 6, no. 4 (November 1966): 1. Calvin and Tradition. Redhill, Surrey: Sovereign Grace Union, 1965. Review of The Heritage of Christian Thought, Essays in Honour of Robert Lowry Colhoun by Robert Cushman and Egil Grists. Westminster Theological Journal 29, no. 2: 236–9. “Bernard of Clairvaux in the Thought of John Calvin.” Paper from Conference of Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, March 1967. “By What Authority?” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 8 (April 1967), 1, 4. “Presbyterian Churchmanship.” Presbyterian Comment 6, no. 10 (August 1967): 3. “The Protestant Reformers and the Civil Magistrate.” Christianity Today 11, no. 21 (21 July 1967): 10–2 [1026–8]. “The Impact of Calvinism on Sixteenth Century Culture.” International Reformed Bulletin no. 31 (October 1967): 3–10. “The Church in Politics: (4) Social Revolt and the Protestant Reformation.” Christianity Today 12, no 2 (27 October 1967): 12–14 [68–70]. “Flowing Ecumenical Tide: What’s Ahead for Canadian Christians?” Christianity Today 11, no 13 (31 March 1967): 11–13 [643–4]. Ed. The Reformation: Revival or Revolution? New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. “Jesus Christ: Focal Point of Knowledge.” Christianity Today 12 (10 May 1968): 3–4 [771–2]. “The Division of the Marian Exiles.” The Canadian Journal of History 3: 1–26. “John Knox and the Reformation in Edinburgh.” John Knox Memorial Lecture, St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. “John Calvin as Lawyer and Legal Reformer.” Renaissance Society of America at McMaster University, Hamilton, on. Review of The Serpent and the Dove: Five Essays on Early Christianity by Samuel Laeuchli. Westminster Theological Journal 31, no. 2: 170–5. “The Expressionless People.” Presbyterian Comment 8, no. 4 (December 1969): 3.

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“Pierre Dugué de Boisbriand,” Canadian Dictionary of Biography, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969, vol II, 295. “Jean Petit,” Canadian Dictionary of Biography, vol II, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965, 521. (with Bernard Weilbrenner) “Dual Crisis of the Western World.” Christianity Today 13, no. 16 (9 May 1969), 10–11 [722–3]. Review of John Knox by Jasper Ridley. Journal of the Canadian Church History Society (June 1969), 44–45 “The Lion Rampant in Sixteenth Century Scotland.” Scottish Colloquium Proceedings University of Guelph 3: 1–14. “Doing It the Modern Way?” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 1 (March 1970): 2. “Christianity and the Contemporary Revolution.” Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 1 (March 1970): 3. “The Commitment of The Church.” Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 1 (March 1970): 3. “Easter Light on History” Christianity Today 14, no. 13 (27 March 1970): 8–9 [576–7]. “A Reformation in Our Church?” Christian Heritage. (May 1970). “The Need for Care.” Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 2 (May 1970): 3. “Christianity: The True Humanism.” Christianity Today 14, no 19 (19 June 1970): 9–11 [849–51]. “Conducting a Cell Group.” Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 3 (August 1970). “Speaking in Tongues.” Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 4 (October 1970). “The Grass-Roots Reformation.” Christianity Today 15, no. 2 (23 October 1970): 6–8 [62–64]. Review of Experiences by Arnold Toynbee. Westminster Theological Journal 32: no 2, 213–16. “The Irrelevancy of the Gospel.” Christian Heritage (November 1970). “The Reformed Church of France.” Presbyterian Record (November 1970): 14–15. “The New Ordination Questions.” Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 5 (December 1970). “Are We At War?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 5 (December 1970): 3.

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“To Maintain Human Dignity.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 5 (December 1970): 3. “Accepting Enemies As Friends?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 5 (December 1970): 3. “The Defence of Civil Rights?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 9, no. 5 (December 1970): 3. Review of The Survival of Scotland by Eric Linklater, The International Journal (1970). “Subjectivity or Objectivity in Historical Understanding” in E. R. Geehan, ed., Jerusalem and Athens, Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed,1971, 404–19. “The Battle Hymns of the Lord: Calvinistic Psalmody of the Sixteenth Century.” Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 2: 36–54. Review of English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation by Peter Heath. Westminster Theological Journal 34, no. 1: 92–94. Review of Canon Law and the Crusader by J.A. Brundage. Westminster Theological Journal 34, no. 1: 92–94. “The Scot and Canadian Identity.” Lakehead University Review 4: 3–25. “Is ‘Christian Rock’ the Answer?” Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 1 (February 1971): 3. “The Pre-eminent Christ” Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 1 (February 1971): 3. “The Church of North India – Some Implications.” Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 2 (May 1971): 1. “Is Sex Education Primary?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 2 (May 1971): 3. “Bishops and Church Union.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 2 (May 1971): 3. “Preaching Is Social Action.” Christianity Today 15, no. 18 (4 June 1971): 10–11[898–9]. “Jesus People May Bring about a New Reformation.” Toronto Star, 18 September 1971. “‘A Little Folding of the Hands and a Little Sleep.’” Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 3: 1. (September 1971). “Need For Power.” Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 4 (November 1971): 3. “Where Is Canada Going?” Presbyterian Comment 10, no. 4 (November 1971): 3. “The Jesus People: A New Reformation?” Presbyterian Record (January 1972): 12–13.

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“A New Type of Christian College.” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 1 (January 1972): 1. “The Limits of Political Government.” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 1 (misnumbered) (April 1972):1. “Christian Faith and Biblical Criticism.” Christianity Today 16, no. 17 (26 May 1972): 11–12[804]. “Christ the Reconciler and Divider.” Christianity Today 16, no. 25 (29 September 1972): 14–16 [1196–8]. “John Knox After 400 Years.” Presbyterian Record (October 1972): 14–5. “John Knox in Amerika.” Die Kerkblad. Potchefstroom, RSA (October 1972). “Is Canada Headed For Totalitarianism?” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 1 (January 1972): 3. “French Influence on the First Scots Confession and Book of Discipline.” Westminster Theological Journal 35, no. 1: 1–14. “Contemporary May Be, But Hardly Christian.” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 1 (April 1972): 3. “The Answer To Strikes.” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 1 (April 1972): 3. “Divisive Action.” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 1 (April 1972): 3. “The Danger of Bureaucracy.” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 2 (May 1972): 3. “First and Second Class Citizens of the Kingdom?” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 11 (May 1972): 3. “Another Angle On Church Building.” Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 3 (May 1972): 3. “Gospel or Social Problem?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 3 (August 1972): 3. “Church of Canada.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 11, no. 3 (August 1972): 3. “John Knox, Revolutionary or Reformer?” Paper delivered at the Sixth Scottish Colloquium, University of Guelph, 1972. “The Reformation in France and Scotland: A Study in 16th Century Communication.” Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, ca and Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, pa. “Christianity as a Counter Culture.” Regent College, Vancouver, bc. “History in Your Attic.” Bruce Country Historical Society. Review of The Acts of William I, King of Scots, G.W.S. Barrow and W.W. Scott, eds. Speculum 48, no. 3: 546–8.

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“The Problem of the Christian Interpretation of History.” Fides et Historia 5, 96–106. “Nationalism of the Scottish Reformation.” Scottish Colloquium Proceedings University of Guelph 3, no. 1: 22–31. “The Coming of the Reformation to Edinburgh.” Church History: 45, no 1: 27–43. “The Death of Christ: Historical and Contemporaneous.” Evangelical Quarterly 45, (1973): 69–80. “John Knox, Pastor of Souls.” Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 2 (April 1973):1, 4. “So Little for the Mind.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 13, no.2 (April 1973): 3. “Testing the Spirits.” Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 2 (April 1973): 3. Holy Spirit Series No.1: “The Christian Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.” Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 3 (June 1973): 1, 4. “Man as God.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 3 (June 1973): 3. “Homogenized Theology.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 3 (June 1973): 3. Holy Spirit Series No. 2: “The Life-Giving Spirit.” Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 4 (October 1973): 1–2. “Immortality and Natural Science.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 4 (October 1973): 3. Review of The Kingdom of the Scots by G.W.S. Barrow. Scottish Colloquium Proceedings University of Guelph 3, no.1: 33–4. (During this period there were five issues of Presbyterian Comment designated 14, no. 1.) Trumpeter of God, A Biography of John Knox. New York: Charles Scribners, 1974. Reprinted 1982, Baker Book House. “John Knox and the Scottish Reformation.” in G. Oosterman, ed. Geneva to Geelong: The Ideas and Influence of John Calvin, Grand Rapids: National Union of Christian Schools, 1974: 45–58. “John Knox and His Interpreters.” Renaissance and Reformation 10, no. 1 (1974): 14–24. “The Historical Development of Christian Scientific Presuppositions.” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 27: 69–75. “Some Questions about the New Pentecostalism.” Christianity Today 18, no. 18 (7 June 1974), 4–6 [1034–6].

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“Is There Any Point In Being Presbyterian?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (March 1974): 3. “Our Church’s One Hundredth Anniversary.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (March 1974): 3. Holy Spirit Series No. 3: “The Holy Spirit the Bestower of Talent.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (March 1974): 1–2, 4. Holy Spirit Series No. 4: “The Holy Spirit In Providence.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (May 1974): 1, 4. “The Centrality of the Individual.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (May 1974): 3. “The Problem of Punishment.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (May 1974): 3. “Protestant Pioneers of New France.” Presbyterian Record (September 1974). Holy Spirit Series No. 5: “The Holy Spirit The Spirit of Revelation.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (October 1974): 1, 3. “The pcc and The Charismatic Movement.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (October 1974): 3. Review of Jean Bodin and the Rise of Absolutist Theory by Julian Franklin. Sixteenth Century Journal 5 (October 1974), 121 “The Links Between the French and the Scottish Reformation.” Midwest Conference on British History, Minneapolis, mn. “The Calvinistic Reformation in a Changing Culture.” Series of three lectures at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, pa. “Wrap Up.” Conference on Faith and History, St Paul, mn, October. “The Reformation in France and Scotland: A Study in Sixteenth Century Communication.” Meeting of the Mid-West Section of the Conference on British Studies, Minneapolis, mn, October. “History in Your Attic.” Bruce County Historical Society. Review of Calvijn en de Doperse Radikalen by W. Balke. Sixteenth Century Journal 4, (1974): 117–18. Review of Inverary and the Duke of Argyll by I.G. Lindsay and Mary Cosh, Scottish Tradition 3–4: 67. Ed. Called To Witness, Profiles of Canadian Presbyterians, Vol. 1. Toronto: Presbyterian Publications, 1975. “Civil Religion, Patriotism and Christian Civic Responsibility.” Fides et Historia 7: 75–9.

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“Scottish Traditions in the New World.” Families 15: 12–18. “The Covenant-Kingdom, A Christian View of History.” Studiestuk no. 99, Institut vir Bervordering van Calvinism, Potchefstroom Univesitreit, (1975). “Greed Is Our Problem,” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (January 1975): 3. “A New Confession for Our Church?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (January 1975): 3. “The Christian’s Death.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (January 1975): 3. Holy Spirit Series No. 6: “The Holy Spirit The Spirit of Christmas.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (January 1975): 1, 4. (During this period there were five issues of Presbyterian Comment designated 14, no. 1) Holy Spirit Series No. 7: “The Holy Spirit in the Work of Christ” Presbyterian Comment 13, no. 3 (June 1975): 1, 4. Holy Spirit Series No. 8: “The Holy Spirit In The Work Of Christ” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (August 1975): 1–2,. “Signs of Cultural Decline?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no 1 (August 1975), 3. “A Sign of Revival.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (August 1975): 3. “Establishing The Kingdom.” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (August 1975): 3. “Is The Westminster Confession Really Our Confession?” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 1 (November 1975): 1–2. “Are We the Same?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 3 (December 1975): 3. “Presbyterian Distinctives.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 3 (December 1975): 3. “Government Integrity.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 3 (December 1975): 3. Review of Calvin und Basel in den Jahren 1552–1556 by Uwe Plath. Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1975). Review of The Last Crusade: The Church of England in the First World War by Albert Marrin. Church History 44 (1975): 126. Review of Politics, Religion and the English Civil War, B. Manning, ed. Canadian Journal of History 10 (1975): 122–3. “Christian in the Secular University.” in Christian Higher Education, Potchefstroom, Republic of South Africa, 264–66.

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ed. A History of Canada’s Peoples: The Scottish Tradition in Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart in association with the Multiculturalism Program, Department of the Secretary of State of Canada, 1976. (Articles by wsr: “The Scottish Protestant Tradition,” 118–36 and “The Scot and Canadian Identity,” 302–10.) “The Beginning of Wisdom.” The Evangelical Quarterly 48 (1976): 144–53. “The Scot and Canadian Identity.” Conference on Scottish History, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, April 23. Holy Spirit Series No. 9: “The Coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost” Presbyterian Comment 14, no. 4 (April 1976): 1, 4. “Is Canada Heading into a Dictatorship?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 15, no. 1 (April 1976): 3. “The Confessional Issue.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 15, no. 1 (April 1976): 3. “Facing A Secular World.” Convocation Address, Wheaton College, 15 June 1976. “Can a Church be Reformed?” Bulletin ter Bervordering van Christtelijke Weteskap. (1976) 48–9, 49–57. Holy Spirit Series No. 10: “Movements of The Spirit in the Acts of the Apostles.” Presbyterian Comment 15, no. 2 (September 1976): 1, 4. “Are We Really Serious?” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 15, no. 2 (September 1976): 3. “The Problem of Ordination.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 15, no. 2 (September1976):3. “Music and the Reformation.” Presbyterian Record. (October 1976). “The Transmission of Calvinism in the 16th Century.” Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, St Louis, mo, 29 October. Holy Spirit Series No. 11: “The Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Church at Corinth.” Presbyterian Comment 15, no. 3 (December 1976): 1, 4. “The Presence of God and the Hope of Man.” International Reformed Bulletin 67, Fourth Quarter 1976:19–26. Review of Huberinus-Rhegias-Holbein by Franz Gunther. Sixteenth Century Journal 7 (1976): 111. Review of The Church Before the Covenants: The Church of Scotland 1596–1638 by W.R. Foster. Church History 45 (1976): 387–8.

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Review of A Christian View of History, George Marsden and F. Roberts, eds. Calvin Theological Journal 11: 264–8. Review of Le temps des reformés by Pierre Chaunu. Westminster Theological Journal 40, no. 1: 123–4. Review of Exploring The Heritage of John Calvin, David Holwerda, ed. Westminster Theological Journal 40, no. 1: 157–61. “Beginning of Wisdom.” Evangelical Quarterly 48: 144–53. “John Knox, Pastor of Souls.” Westminster Theological Journal 40, no. 1: 1–21. “The Protestant Reformation After 450 Years.” Canadian Theological College, Regina, 2–4 February Holy Spirit Series No. 12: “Christian Love and the Gifts of the Spirit.” Presbyterian Comment 15, no. 4 (June 1977): 1, 2. “Writings on Early Modern European History during the Last Decade.” Conference on Faith and History, Greenville, il, 7–8 October. “The Relations of the French and the Scottish Reformations.” Joint meeting of American Society of Reformation Research and the American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, ca, 28–31 December. A Century and a Half of Witness, 1828–1978, The Story of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Guelph, Ontario. Mississauga, on: Moyers and Smart, 1982. “Bernard of Clairvaux in the thought of John Calvin.” Westminster Theological Journal 41, no. 2: 127–45. “The Present State of Research in Early Modern European History.” Fides et Historia 11: 19–27. “The Question of the Church: Nature and Mission.” editorial, Presbyterian Comment 16, no. 1 (March 1978): 3. Holy Spirit Series No. 13: “The Holy Spirit in Tongues and Prophecy.” Presbyterian Comment 16, no. 1 (March 1978): 1, 4. Review of The University of Glasgow 1451–1577 by James Kirk and John Durkan. Canadian Journal of History, August 1978, 13, Issue 2, 269–72. Review of Scotland’s Relations with England: A Survey to 1707 by William Ferguson. Canadian Journal of History, August 1978, 13, Issue 2, 278–80. Holy Spirit Series No. 14: “The Holy Spirit in the History of the Church.” Presbyterian Comment 16, no. 2 (December 1978): 5, 6.

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1981

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Review of Zwingli by G.R. Potter. Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 7, no.3: 357–8. “God’s People as Ferment.” International Reformed Bulletin nos. 74/5: 5–8. “No Reformation Without Revival.” Presbyterian Comment 18, no. 1 (December 1979). Review of The University of Glasgow, 1451–1577, ed: John Durkan and James Kirk. Church History 48: 103–4. Review of Christianity and the World Order by Edward Norman. Christianity Today 24, no. 1 (4 January 1980): 39–40 [39–40]. “Justification by Faith according to John Calvin.” Westminster Theological Journal 42: 290–307. ed. Called To Witness, Profiles of Canadian Presbyterians, Vol. 2. Don Mills, on: Committee on History, Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1975. (Article by wsr, “The Quebec Trio,” 93–106.) Review of God and Man in Time: A Christian Approach to Historiography by Earle E. Cairns. Fides et Historia 12, no. 2: 104–13 Review of The Bible and the Future by Anthony A. Hoekema. Westminster Theological Journal 43: 154–66. “The Four Monarchies of Daniel in Reformation Historiography.” Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques 8, no. 1: 115–23. “The Kingdom of God, The Key to History.” [Bibliography; reply, R. Love] Fides et Historia 13, no. 2: 6–15. Look To The Rock. Sydney: The Christian Education Committee, Presbyterian Church of Australia, 1981. “Is There a Christian Approach to the Writing of History?” Fides et Historia 12, no. 2: 104–13. “James Kirk, ed., The Second Book of Discipline.” Sixteenth Century Journal 12, no. 4: 121. Review of Calvin and English Calvinism by R.T. Kendall. Christian Scholar’s Review 10, no. 4: 355–6. ed. John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982. (essays by wsr: “The Transmission of Calvinism in the Sixteenth Century,” 33–52, “Calvin’s Influence in Canada,” 309–21). “John Calvin, Pastoral Theologian.” Reformed Theological Review 42, no. 3 (September-December 1982): 65–73. “The Reformed Tradition of Ecumenism.” Australian Presbyterian Life (August 1982): 8–9. Originally a paper read to a

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joint Presbyterian Church in Canada/United Church of Canada Committee, October 1976. It also appeared in the Canadian Presbyterian Record, (October 1983): 32–4. Review of Court, Kirk and Community Scotland 1470–1625 by Jenny Wormald. Canadian Journal of History, August 1982, 17, Issue 2, 330–2 “The Divisions in Christendom: Are Objections to Unity Silly or Based on Substance?” Christianity Today 26, no. 17 (22 October 1982): 12–13. “Christian Orientations to Science.” Paper delivered to the Canadian Scientific and Christian Association, 6 October. Review of Edinburgh and the Reformation by Michael Lynch. Sixteenth Century Journal 13, no. 3: 124–5. Review of Presbyteries and Profits: Calvinism and the Development of Capitalism by Gordon Marshall. Sixteenth Century Journal 13, no. 3: 123–4. Review of Die Etiek van Calvyn by J.H. van Wyk. Christian Scholar’s Review 11, no. 2: 163–4. “William Jordan Rattray,” Canadian Dictionary of Biography, vol. X, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982, 295. “Calvin’s Geneva: A Missionary Centre.” Reformed Theological Review 42: 65–74. “John Calvin: The Father of Capitalism?” Themelios ns 8, no. 2 (January 1983): 19–25. “John Calvin, Early Critic of Capitalism, Part 1: An Alternative.” Reformed Theological Review 43: 74–81. “The Pamphlet Collection on the Church of Scotland’s Disruption of 1843.” Special Edition, Collection Update. University of Guelph Library, no. 7, 1983 for the Scottish Heritage Festival May 1983: 35–8. “The Reformed Tradition of Ecumenism: An Historical Analysis.” Presbyterian Record (October 1983): 32–4. Review of The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland: Essays, eds. Ian Cowan and Duncan Shaw, Sixteenth Century Journal 15, no. 2: 240–1. Review of “Coming to Terms with Darwin.” Historical Reflections 11: 71–82. “Is Inerrancy the Right Word?” Reformed Journal 34, no. 4: 3–4. “J. Gresham Machen” in David Wells, ed., Reformed Theology In America: A History of its Modern Development. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.

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1987

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“John Calvin, Early Critic of Capitalism, Part 2: An Alternative.” Reformed Theological Review 44: 9–12. Review of Down-To-Earth Cherub: The Life and Legend of Finley Stewart by W.K. Thomas. Church History 54 (June 1985): 277. Review of The Mind of John Knox by Richard G. Kyle. Church History 54 (December 1985): 526–7. “The Book of Discipline: Church and State in the Scottish Reformation.” Fides et Historia 18, no. 3 (October 1986): 35–44. “Sir J. William Dawson on Creation and Evolution.” Reformed Theological Review 45, no.1 (January–April, 1986): 13–17. Review of Criticism and Faith in Late Victorian Scotland: A. B. Davidson, by Richard A. Riesen. Westminster Theological Journal 48, no. 1: 198–200. Review of The Resistance to Church Union in Canada, 1904– 1939 by N. Keith Clifford. Church History 55, no. 3: 391–2. Review of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots by Patricia Buchanan. Sixteenth Century Journal 17, no. 4 (Winter 1986): 538. Review of Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment by Richard B. Sher. Canadian Journal of History, December 1986, 22, Issue 2, 434–5. “John Calvin, John Knox and the Scottish Reformation.” in J. Bradley and R. Muller, eds., Church, Word and Spirit Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987. “Calvin’s View of Natural Science” in E. Furcha, ed. In Honour of John Calvin, 1509–1564, Montreal: McGill University Press, 1987. “Moses Wrote for Non-scientific Readers.” Calvinist Contact (6 February 1987). “The Preacher as Teaching Elder.” Channels 4, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 4–6. “Church Renewal and Social Reform.” Channels 4, no. 4 (Fall 1987): 7–9. Review of John Knox The Political Writings, ed. Marvin Breslow, Church History 56, no. 2: 273–4. Review of The Assembly of the Lord by Robert S. Paul. Christian Scholar’s Review 17, no.1: 101–2. Review of Defending and Declaring the Faith Some Scottish Examples 1860 by Alan P.F. Sell. Calvin Theological Journal 27: 384–5.

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“Hubert-Joseph Lacroix,” Canadian Dictionary of Biography, vol VI, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987, 382–4. “Nicholas-Eustache Lambert Dumont,” Canadian Dictionary of Biography, vol VI, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987, 385–7. (“in collaboration with wsr”) Review of The Love of a Prince by Laurence L. Bongie. Canadian Journal of History, August 1987, 22, Issue 2, 258. “John Knox’s Theology of Political Government.” Sixteenth Century Journal 19, no. 4: 529–40. “Needed: A Spiritual Revolution,” Channels 5, nos. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 1988). Review of David Beaton, c 1494–1546 by Margaret H.B. Sanderson. Sixteenth Century Journal 19, no. 2: 311–12. Review of Christ and the Decree: Christology and Predestination in Reformed Thinking by Richard A. Muller. Sixteenth Century Journal 19, no. 3: 510. Review of A Hotbed of Genius by David Daiches. Canadian Journal of History, August 1988, 23, Issue 1, 121. Review of Mary Stewart’s People by Margaret H. B. Sanderson. Canadian Journal of History, August 1988, 23, Issue 2, 259. “Church History as a Reformed Theological Discipline.” Reformed Theological Review 48: 81–92. Review of Defending and Declaring the Faith Some Scottish Examples 1860 by Alan P.F. Sell. Christian Scholar’s Review 19, no. 1: 93–4. Also Calvin Theological Journal 27 (November 1992), 384–85. Review of The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710 by David Stevenson. Sixteenth Century Journal 20, no. 4: 662. Review of Luther’s Scottish Connection by James E. McGoldrick. Sixteenth Journal 21, no. 4: 699. “Christianity and Social Revolution.” Presbyterian Record (October 1991). “Urbanization: A New Factor in Christian Missions.” Channels 7, no. 3 (Winter 1991): 13–15. Review of James IV by Norman MacDougall. Sixteenth Century Journal 22, no. 1: 138. “John Calvin, Pastor of Geneva.” [Bibliography] Urban Mission 9: 35–44. “Loneliness and The Christian.” Presbyterian Record. (March 1992): 16–17. Reprinted in Australian Presbyterian Life

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Today (June 1992) and also reprinted as “Helping The Lonely” in Channels 9, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 14–15. Review of Patterns of Reform, Continuity and Change in the Reformation by James Kirk. Church History 61: 99–100. Review of Calvin and Social Welfare: Deacons and the Bourse française by Jeannine E. Olson. Church History 61: 92–3. Review of The Reverend William Proudfoot and the United Secession Mission by Stewart D. Gill. Reformed Theological Review 52: 90–1. “When Church and State Collide.” Presbyterian Record (June 1993), 20–1. Review of George Gillespie A Dispute against the English Popish Ceremonies Obtruded on the Church of Scotland, ed. C. Coldwell,. Sixteenth Century Journal 24, no. 4: 1053–4. “Reformation in France and Scotland: a Case Study in Sixteenth Century Communication” in ed., W. Fred Graham, Later Calvinism: International Perspectives in the Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies series, vol. 22; Kirksville, mo: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994. Review of Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology, eds. Nigel M de S. Cameron and David F. Wright and David Lachman, Calvin Theological Journal 29:630–1. (posthumous) (presented in 1981) “John Knox: the First of the Monarchomachs?” in Covenant Connection, Daniel Joseph Elazar, ed. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2000. 119–141.

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two

Notes

A&P

pcc Archives r/sa, wts wsra wsrff

Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly, Presbyterian Church in Canada Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Don Mills Reid/Shepherd Archives, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia W. Stanford Reid Archive, McLaughlin Archives, University of Guelph W. Stanford Reid Family Fonds, Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, Don Mills

introduction 1 2 3 4 5

Hart, “Machen, Confessional Presbyterianism.” Reid, “J. Gresham Machen,” 106. Machen, What Is Christianity, 170. Machen, What Is Faith?, 23. To put the freedom McGill and Montreal provided Reid into context, see the argument that evangelicals were disenfranchised from higher education in books such as George Marsden, The Soul of the American University; James Burtchell, The Dying of the Light; and Douglas Sloan’s Faith and Knowledge. 6 James McGill, whose bequest of 10,000 (as well as his estate outside Montreal) established what is now McGill University in 1821. James McGill was a member of St Gabriel Street Church, the oldest Presbyterian congregation in Montreal, as well as a member of its powerful Temporal Committee.

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7 Sir John William Dawson (1820–1899) was principal of McGill from 1855 to 1893. “The first Canadian-born scientist of world-wide reputation,” to quote Donald Phillipson in The Canadian Encyclopedia, his career was remarkable. As a scientist he was ardently anti-evolutionary, though, as a geologist, he conceded that the earth was at least 100 million years old. Reid would go back to Dawson in retirement, writing in a 1986 article: “He was a strong Calvinist, and a convinced believer in the inspiration and authority of the Bible as the Word of God. This view point dominated his thinking in all its various aspects.” (“Sir J. William Dawson,” 14) 8 Legends about Malcolm Campbell are legion but this one was confirmed by his son Ian, now of Huntingdon, qc, in a conversation with the author on 27 March 2003. Ian was his father’s driver in old age. 9 Reid, “Look To The Rock,” 7.

chapter one 1 Charles Drury to the governor of Quebec, 5 April 1837, photocopy, wsrff, pcc Archives. 2 So described by Dr H. E. Gillanders in an undated (1950s) monograph “The Reid Family,” (p. 8). In his account Gillanders gives high commendation to his uncle W.D. Reid, who intervened when, as a young man, he was dismissed peremptorily and unfairly as a teacher, secured him alternative employment, and thus rescued his medical career. At the end of his account he writes: “The name of Rev. W.D. Reid keeps coming into this record. The reason is that he was so kind and generous that everyone loved and honoured him,” (29). 3 They were: Elizabeth (Kidd) (1864–1950); William Dunn (1865–1952); Jane Clara (Craig) (1868–1906); Andrew Dunn (1870–1954); John (1872–1931); Eva (1874–1940); Allan Stewart (1877–1962); Margaret (Thompson) (1879–1965?). 4 Reid, “The Quebec Trio,” Called to Witness, volume 2, 93–106. 5 Clipping, scrapbook 1, wsrff, pcc Archives. 6 W.D. Reid, unpublished Autobiography, 32–3. ms in the possession of E.A.S. Reid, Knowlton, Quebec, and graciously loaned to the author. 7 MacVicar, “The Westminster Confession of Faith,” 9. 8 W.D.Reid, “The Late Principal MacVicar,” 213, 215. 9 Stanford Reid also returned to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit when he was in his sixties, with a fourteen-part series in Presbyterian Comment from 1973 to 1978. 10 W.D.Reid, “The Winona Conference,” 23. 11 Henry Martyn Parsons (1828–1913), born in Connecticut, 1848 Yale graduate, served two churches in Massachusetts and then went on to Buf-

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falo. In 1876 he helped found the Believers’ Meeting which two years later organized the first International Prophecy Conference. In 1880 he was called to Knox Church, Toronto. The 1885 Niagara Prophecy Conference, which he helped coordinate and at which he spoke, was “the crucial event in the spread of premillenialism in Canada.” (Trollinger, “Henry Martyn Parsons” in Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America, 187) He was a board member of S.R.Briggs’ Willard Tract Depository in Toronto which promoted dispensational premillenialism. His insistence on the imminent return of Christ split and ended the Niagara conference in 1895. (See also R.G.Sawatsky, ‘Looking for That Blessed Hope’: The Roots of Fundamentalism in Canada, 1878–1914. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1986.) The surviving sermons by W.D. Reid, five Sundays from 30 April 1920 to 22 September 1928 (25.30 to 31.38), were preserved by J. Marcellus Kik and are in the possession of his son Rev. Dr Frank Kik, Fort Mill, South Carolina. Stanford Reid explained his destruction of the rest of his father’s sermons on the basis of their flowery Victorian oratory and the fact that they were topical rather than exegetical (as he had been taught by R. B. Kuyper to preach). Reid, “Look to the Rock,” 69, 71. A fifth, James Ross, came to teach practical theology and preaching only in W.D. Reid’s final year. Daniel Shute, “Daniel Coussirat,” Called to Witness, vol. 4, Don Mills, on: Committee on History, pcc 1999, 37. See also Mack’s “Of Canadian Presbyterians.” E.A. Collard, ed., “All Our Yesterdays,” Montreal Gazette, 28 June 1947, 2. In a letter of 28 July 1937 to Marcellus Kik, in response to an article by W.D. Reid in Bible Christianity, which Kik edited. Courtesy of Rev. Dr Frank Kik, Fort Mill, South Carolina. William Ross (1836–1904) was a Free Church and, after 1900, a United Free Church minister, who served from 1881 to 1901 in Cowcaddens Free Church, Glasgow. While en route to visit his older brother in New Zealand, Ross was invited to speak on revival to the 1892 fifth General Council of the Alliance of Reformed Churches, held in Toronto. It occasioned so much interest he was given more time to expand his concern. Son and biographer J.M.E. Ross wrote: “Through all these latter years of Highland and general work he was like a man on the outlook, – on the outlook for one thing: the working of the Spirit of God.” William Ross, 301. Ross went to South Africa out of concern for his health and after spending time in a sanatorium in Cape Province, and calling on missionary friends, visited the devotional writer, faith healer, and itinerant evangelist

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Andrew Murray (1828–1917). A Dutch Reformed minister, Murray has been described as a forerunner of Pentecostalism, and his devotional writings, such as Abide in Christ and With Christ in the School of Prayer, continue to be influential. Here W.D.’s memory forty-five years later in his autobiography may have failed him. When Ross’ son’s biography of his father was published in 1905 Adam Renwick, Ross’ colleague and successor, was happily settled in Cowcaddens. Quoted in a paper by Peter Bush, “Evangelism in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1875–1925,” and read to a conference hosted by the Committee on History, pcc, held 24–25 May 2002 at Knox College, Toronto, p. 8. Bush is quoting Kilpatrick and Shearer’s The Kootenay Campaign, 11. Peter Bush, “Evangelism in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1875–1925,” and read to a conference hosted by the Committee on History, pcc, held 24–25 May, 2002, at Knox College, Toronto, p. 8. W.D. wrote in “Mission Work in Alberta,” an undated (1911?) pamphlet published by the pcc Board of Home Missions: “We need men of the right type for the missions fields; men of faith and zeal, with good, strong, sterling, wholesome lives, who have an evangelical, positive message for the people. Then we need money, so that every minister and student and catechist may receive a proper remuneration for his services. And above all we need the fervent, believing prayers of God’s people. With all these combined the future is assured.” W.D. Reid, unpublished Autobiography, 253–4. Manuscript in the possession of E.A.S. Reid, Knowlton, qc, and graciously loaned to the author. Ibid., 238. Five of their children were born in London and four in Cootham. In the 1891 census their ages are listed as Alice, twenty-two, Ernest, eighteen, Rose, fifteen, Daisy, twelve, Lillian, nine, Violet, eight. Additional children listed in the 1881 census (with their ages at that time) but no longer at home a decade later were Minnie, fourteen, Kate, eleven, Albert, seven. According to Dr John Moll of Sheffield in a letter 1 September 2002 to the author, the birth years of the nine were: Minnie, 1866; Alice, 1869; Kate, 1870; Ernest, 1873; Albert, 1874; Rose, 1876; Daisy, 1879; Lillian, 1882; Violet, 1883. Aside from the Molls who came to Canada, the Bevan Joneses, and the Earl of Moray connection, Stanford Reid did not keep up with his mother’s family. Joan Ham, Storrington in Living Memory, 116. David Bebbington says that Darbyite dispensationalism “gradually became the most popular version of futurism. In the nineteenth century it remained a minority view among premillenialists, but this intense form of

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36 37 38 39 40

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apocalyptic expectation would achieve much greater salience in the twentieth.” Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 86. When Stanford Reid went to his first summer mission field in 1931, his mother gave him a dispensationalist Scofield Bible. Matthew 24:14. For a North American perspective on the intertwining of the millennial and the missionary, see chapter 3, “This Gospel Shall Be Preached,” in Timothy Weber Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming, 65–81. Rose, later known as Rosa, died in Milan on 13 August 1939 and is buried there in the Anglican Cemetery, Cimitero Monumentale, with her son Peter Stanford Moll (1905–1926). (Information provided kindness of Dr J.M.H. Moll of Sheffield, England, 20 March 2003.) At their home in Lahore, Violet was “a gracious hostess, taking a lively interest in everyone and being absolutely at one with her husband in the work to which he was committed, that of bringing the Gospel to Muslims who he felt were being neglected” (“Memoirs of Ministers and Missionaries,” Baptist Union Directory, 1973–74, 292.) They were childless. She died in 1972. Zenana Bible Medical Mission, Minutes, England: Candidates Sub-Committee, 15 July 1903. Zenana Bible Medical Mission, Minutes (England), Item 1158, 507. Zenana Bible Medical Mission, Minutes (Canada), 22 October 1909 (2nd vol.), 41 to be found in the Archives of Interserve/Canada, 10 Huntingdale Blvd., Scarborough and used by kind permission. Ibid., 44 (2 November 1909). Ibid., 58 (11 March 1909). Ibid., 71 (20 June 1909). Ibid., 89 (14 January 1910). Information gleaned from Kelly’s Directory of Redhill, Reigate and Neighbourhood, 1904–05 and 1909–10 editions, through the kindness of Margaret Griffiths for the county archivist, Surrey County Council, Woking, Surrey, 16 July 2002. At this point we lose track of Daisy’s parents. Aside from a visit in 1924, when Reuben had retired in Totnes, Devon, little is known about him or his two sons by the rest of the family. According to family records, Reuben was born in 1843. There is an entry in Somerset House of a Reuben who died in 1932, leaving a small estate. Humphrey Chalmers (1880–1943), born in Dumbartonshire, graduate of Glasgow University, went on to Glasgow Baptist College. He held pastorates in Wallingford, Red Hill (1910–15), Wandsworth (London), and Warrington. Charles Walter Shelley (1875– ?), born in London, a member of Taylor Church, Montreal, was a 1909 graduate of Presbyterian College. His first charge was Valleyfield, qc. In 1913 he went to First Church, Brockville,

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on. On 21 March 1916 he enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force as chaplain to the 59th battalion, serving overseas with the Canadian army. On being demobbed, he was called 3 August 1920 to St Andrew’s, Sault Ste Marie, a church well-known to the Reids: Andrew had been minister there from 1906 to 1912, W.D. was preacher when the imposing stone edifice was dedicated February 1908. At a special meeting on 8 May 1921 Shelley was dismissed and disappeared from view. (Information provided by Rev. Phil Miller, Sault Ste Marie, 12 March 2004.) This may have been the incident, obliquely referred to later, that shaped some of Stanford Reid’s attitudes.

chapter two 1 “A Short History of Stanley Presbyterian Church,” two pages foolscap prepared the seventieth anniversary of Stanley Church in 1944, wsra, Box 7. 2 Reid, “Sir J. William Dawson,” 13. 3 Stanley Presbyterian Church Kirk Session, Minutes, 7 April 1919, pcc Archives. 4 Among these were the Lord’s Day Alliance of Quebec (W.D. was president 1908–9) and the Quebec League Against Alcoholism, which he headed in 1928–29. 5 In “Sir J. William Dawson,” Reid reflected “That Sir William Dawson would have agreed with the present crop of opponents of evolution is rather doubtful,”13. 6 John McNeill (1854–1933), Scots pastor-evangelist, left London’s Regent Square Church in 1891 to follow an itinerant ministry supported by Lord Overtoun, John Campbell White, the Presbyterian philanthropist and missionary enthusiast. White died in 1908. McNeill was called to Cooke’s Presbyterian Church in Toronto, where he served for fifteen months in 1913 and 1914, during which time he received 350 new members. He was en route to Europe to evangelize the armed forces when he stopped off at Montreal for the Stanley Church dedication service. He returned to North America after the First World War and was invited to speak at Stanley Church several times in the 1920s, maintaining a warm friendship with W.D. “He was in practice a freelance independent, under no church’s jurisdiction” (Ken Stewart, “John McNeill,” Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology, 534). 7 T.T. Shields (1873–1955) was minister of Jarvis St Baptist Church in Toronto from 1910 to his death. He was the leader of a group that left the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec in 1927, accusing the denomination of condoning modernism at McMaster College. Shields said to the Baptist Fundamentalist League of New York at that time:

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“Everywhere the Christian religion is at a discount because of the negations of modernism ... I refuse to be compelled not only by the state, but by cleverly manipulated denominational machinery, to support men and institutions whose teaching my conscience abhors.” See the section on T.T. Shields in David Elliott’s “Knowing No Barriers” in Rawlyk and Noll, eds, Amazing Grace, 364–9. John Gresham Machen (1881–1937) taught at Princeton Seminary from 1906 to 1929. In the advertising circular for his 1923 Christianity and Liberalism he wrote, “The author is convinced that liberalism on the one hand and the religion of the historic church on the other are not two varieties of the same religion, but two distinct religions proceeding from altogether separate roots.” Email 3 August 1999 from wsr’s cousin Bernie Kellam of Niagara Falls to the author, recalling a conversation with Stanford’s first cousin Alma Reid. wsr to Tad Reid, 1 May 1974, wsra, Box 2, File 6. Clifford, The Resistance to Church Union, 55. Such as Black Rock, Sky Pilot, and Glengarry School Days. See D. Barry Mack, “Modernity Without Tears: The Mythic World of Ralph Connor,” in William Klempa, ed., Burning Bush and a Few Acres of Snow (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1994), 139–58. In 1898 Andrew was student minister in Abbotsford and Mission City, bc, where he won the respect of the locals as a horseman when he bought and tamed a wild mustang. Gordon made this incident famous in his novel Sky Pilot. In the case of Bannatyne v. Overtoun decided in 1904 by the House of Lords, property of the Free Church was declared to be rightfully owned by the continuing church in as much as they could make use of it. Hence the claim that many of the spoils of that court decision had actually been unused by the continuing Free Church. This calumny was perpetrated by Carnegie Simpson in his 1909 biography of Principal Rainy, a book that Stanford Reid criticized as being polemical rather than historical. See Ross, Church and Creed in Scotland: The Free Church Case 1900–1904 and Its Origins. This information taken from Carnegie Simpson’s two-volume The Life of Principal Rainy. See Grant’s George Pidgeon. Grant, George Pidgeon, 69. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 69. Allan Stewart Reid was taken out of school in 1889 at the age of twelve by his father to work on the farm. He resumed his education at seventeen, going the same route as W.D.: Leeds, Danville, then Morin College,

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and finally Presbyterian College. There he won the David Morrice Scholarship for the highest marks in the final two years. Ordained by the Presbytery of Ottawa in 1904, he went on to study semitics at Princeton Seminary where his health broke. He spent two years in Cuba at a farm W.D. owned as an investment, clearing an orange grove. Fully recovered by1907, he was called to Rockburn and Gore, qc. He was inducted into Livingstone Memorial Church in Montreal’s new suburb of Park Extension in June of 1912, leaving in January 1921. (“Resolution re: the retiring clerk,” Minutes, Presbytery of Montreal, 14 April 1953, vol. 1952–54, 45). W.S. Reid, “The Quebec Trio,” 101. Margaret Westley says of the ferment leading up to Church Union in Quebec: “People talked about nothing else for months ... The old family Protestantism tended not to favour union. It is significant that most of these belonged to the established churches ... the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. Their religion was aligned with their British traditions as well as their social position. Unionists were likely to be the more evangelical members, or the advocates of the involvement of the church in social issues, or those concerned with the waste and inefficiency of too many small congregations” Remembrance of Grandeur, 140. Minutes of Session, Stanley Presbyterian Church, Westmount, qc, 12 December 1924, pcc Archives. Thus Marshall, Secularizing the Faith, notes causes for the accelerating secularization of Canada. As early as the 1930s (“a disheartening time in the United Church of Canada”) he states that it became clear that there was both an “ongoing inability of the church to foster a religious revival and formulate a statement of Christian theology, and the sense that Canadian society was becoming an unchristian one.” (248) This judgment has been echoed by scholars from the United States who take an interest in Canadian affairs. In an unpublished lecture “What Happened to Christian Canada?” given at Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, on 15 October 2002 Mark Noll, Wheaton College, Wheaton, il, suggested that Canadian debates over Union in 1925 had some of the same unintended, but negative, effects on abilities to mobilize energies for the future that attended intramural American Presbyterian debates of the late 1920s and 1930s (Email from Mark Noll January 29, 2004). Two years before Allan Reid’s death at eighty-two he was still at the plough at his Rockburn, qc, farm.”He is a powerful man. He stands sixfoot four and weighs 246 pounds” (“Retired Presbyterian Clergyman Keeping Active and Healthy on Farm in Townships” Montreal Star, 4 June 1960, wsrff, pcc Archives, scrapbook 2). W.D. did not allow increasing immobility to slow him down. His final year at Stanley Church, from the Tuesday after Labour Day 1935 to

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March 1936, he registered 555 pastoral visits. (W.D. Reid scrapbook, pcc Archives.) Percy Corbett of the McGill Law Faculty in Collard, ed., The McGill You Know, 227. The McGill Daily, 29 November 1933. H. Wyatt Johnston, “What McGill Was – And Wasn’t,” in Collard, ed., The McGill You Know, 1. Adair, “The Teaching of History at McGill,” 51. Ibid., 52. Ibid., 56. Ibid., 54. W. T. Waugh (1884–1932) received the bachelor of divinity degree in 1905 but was never ordained, choosing instead to be an academic, a choice that anticipated Reid’s career dilemma. While at Manchester Waugh published Archbishop Peckham and the Pluralities (1913) and completed with a third volume Wylie’s Henry V. When he arrived at McGill, he branched into Canadian history and wrote James Wolfe (1928). The year he died he contributed a chapter to Cambridge Medieval History. An asthma attack during his annual summer research trip to England had affected his heart. Editorial, Montreal Gazette, 18 October 1932. Waugh was popular on the campus. His reciting of “Summer was icumen in” was legendary. At a Rotary luncheon he jousted with the humourist Stephen Leacock, teasing him gently for his unflattering comparison of Quebec education with that of the University of Toronto: “When with the zeal of a convert,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “[Leacock] states his views somewhat extravagantly we listen with indulgence. When he exalts his alma mater Toronto University, we forego the right of recrimination. When a man says his mother is the best woman in the world, we think the better of him for it, though we do not necessarily accept his estimate.” (Montreal Star, 13 October, 1931) Barbara Whitley, “Professor Adair: The Iconoclast,” in Collard, ed., The McGill You Knew,74. Hereward Senior, interview with the author, 26 April 2002. W.J. Eccles, “Notes and Comments: Edward Robert Adair,” Canadian Historical Review 15: 297. Ibid. Hereward Senior, interview with the author, 26 April 2002. Old McGill, 1934: 262. Born in Shanghai in 1876, Fryer was the son of a government inspector. His father later became professor of oriental languages at the University of California, Berkeley. Fryer’s Ph.D. was from Harvard. He died in 1940.

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46 “Professor Fryer: Pince-Nez and Black Ribbon,” in Collard, ed., The McGill You Knew, 73. 47 wsr to Hyacinth Lauber, 24 May 1980, wsrff, pcc Archives. 48 The second reader was Professor W.P.M. Kennedy of the University of Toronto. 49 Talman reviewed the book both in Church History 5 (1936): 401–2 and in The Canadian Historical Review 17 (1936): 445–6. 50 Canadian Historical Review 17 (1936): 445–6. 51 Church History 5 (1936): 402. 52 Ibid. 53 The British Weekly, 6 August 1936. 54 J.B. Maclean to W.D. Reid, 21 December 1936, scrapbook 1, wsrff, pcc Archives.

chapter three 1 Numerically the Presbytery of Montreal was surpassed only by the Presbytery of Toronto until it was divided at Bathurst Street on 4 January 1949 into two presbyteries, East and West Toronto. At the time the three presbyteries were approximately the same size, 13,000 communicants. West Toronto Presbytery went into a rapid decline in the late 1950s, as did Montreal in the 1960s. East Toronto Presbytery, the largest and most powerful in the denomination for many years, was itself divided on 1 January 1990. 2 Minutes of Session, Stanley Presbyterian Church, Westmount, qc, 13 March 1921 (pcc Archives). 3 wsr to Edmund Clowney, 5 January 1977 r/s, wts. 4 The two churches were amalgamated in1918. See James S. S. Armour. Saints, Sinners and Scots: A History of the Church of St Andrew and St Paul, Montreal, 1803–2003 (Montreal: Church of St Andrew and St Paul, 2003). 5 A.R.D. Nesbitt, Dry Goods & Pickles, 35. 6 Friends, This One Thing, insert between 48 and 49. 7 See Showalter’s The End of A Crusade for an analysis of why and how the Student Volunteer Movement changed its original theology and vision following the Des Moines quadrennial in December of 1919. 8 Glover’s The Progress of World-Wide Missions, published in 1924, became the classic text in North American missionary training institutes and Bible schools. 9 McGill Daily, October 1933. 10 An interview by Lawrence Neale Jones with Stacey Woods on 24 June 1960, as recorded in Jones’ 1961 Yale University Ph.D. thesis The Inter-

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Varsity Christian Fellowship in the United States, 143, states that Woods was under the supervision of the episcopal bishop of East Texas. wsr, letter of sympathy to Yvonne Woods on Stacey’s death, 30 April 1983, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Donald Posterski, 5 July 1982, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Stewart Gill, 22 March 1986, courtesy of Stewart Gill. Frank W. Beare (1902–1985) graduated from University College, University of Toronto, with first class honours in 1922 and graduated from Knox College in 1929. He was called to be assistant to Stuart Parker at St Andrew’s, Toronto, and served there until he was appointed to Presbyterian College in 1933. He remained there until the College closed in 1942. He went to Union Theological Seminary in New York as a lecturer in 1944 and received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago the following year. He was professor of New Testament Studies at the Trinity College, University of Toronto, from 1946 to 1968. Received into the Anglican Church in 1947 on ordination as deacon (priested the next year), Knox College awarded him the D.D. days before his death in 1985. H. Keith Markell, History of The Presbyterian College, Montreal, 1865–1986 (Montreal: The Presbyterian College, 1987), 40. wsr to Stewart Gill, 22 March 1986, courtesy of Stewart Gill. “From Our Readers,” The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 11 June 1942. Memories contained in a letter to Harold Fickett, researching the life of Francis Schaeffer for a biography, dated 25 November 1985, wsrff, pcc Archives, Don Mills, on. W.S. Reid, “J. Gresham Machen,” 116. In a 20 January 1941 transcript signed Paul Woolley, Registrar, wts, wsrff, pcc Archives. Earl Robinson, interview with the author, 12 August 1999, Manchester, nh. Conversations by the author with Rev. Denis Francis Mildon and his wife Catherine, Montreal West, February and March 1956. In a followup interview with eighty-nine-year-old Catherine Mildon, 26 March 2002 in Toronto, she could not recall details of this Christmas 1935 meeting. Others active at the time in the mcf circle included Rita DePierro, daughter of the minister of the Italian Presbyterian Church and secretary of McGill Christian Fellowship 1933–4, and longtime ivcf staff member Cathie Nicoll, both contemporaries of wsr. On 14 May 1981 wsr wrote on Cathie Nicoll’s fiftieth anniversary on ivcf staff: “I can still remember the first (sic) fellowship conference in Toronto at the cim House in 1930 with Noel Palmer, Art Hill, Bill Klinck ...” wsr’s sister-in-law, Barbara, said that, because of their teetotalling youth, neither her husband Stewart, nor Stanford, ever learned the fine art of

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how to nurse a drink during a party. (Barbara Reid, interview with the author, 26 April 2002.) Wilber Sutherland (successor in 1952 to Stacey Woods as ivcf general secretary) told the author in February 1956 that Reid was more acceptable to the University of Toronto ivcf than he was to McGill. Toronto ivcf was more self-confident intellectually and less pietistic, reflecting a Toronto evangelical/fundamentalist subculture that had more diversity and was less insular than Montreal. Priscilla Reid diary, August 1955-August 1956, 27. wsrff, pcc Archives. By Donald Posterski, then Ontario divisional director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. wsr to Donald Posterski, 5 July 1982, wsrff, pcc Archives. Cf Paul Bramadat’s The Church on the World’s Turf: “ivcf discourse ... includes both bridging and fortress-making language ... many students (from across the evangelical spectrum) feel occasionally that they are in hostile territory. Many of them describe feeling unprepared for the intellectual and moral challenges to their faith that they have to face in the university environment” (68–9). Bramalat, a non-evangelical, became a part of the McMaster Christian Fellowship, examining its pathology in the 1990s, and wrote up his observations in a Ph.D. thesis which was subsequently published. Those associated with the Association of Middle-Atlantic Theological Seminaries. The League’s formation on 4 April 1925 in Pittsburgh was one of the irritants that led to serious division in the faculty of Princeton Seminary, resulting in its reorganization in 1929 when some professors joined Machen to found Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia (Rian, Presbyterian Conflict, 43–5). Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen, 414. William James Jones (1901–1973) was a graduate of Wheaton College (1925) and Princeton Seminary (1928). After a year teaching in Des Moines, he succeeded Paul Woolley as secretary of the League of Evangelical Students in 1929. He left the league in 1932 and went on to teach at fundamentalist institutions such as Columbia Bible College, King’s College, and the dispensationalist Bible Institute of Pennsylvania. He then became editor at the American Sunday School Union from 1942 to1966. A lifetime minister of the American (i.e., northern) Baptist Convention and a member of the Wayne, pa, Baptist Church, he was no ecclesiastical separatist. For a full treatment of the birthing of Inter-Varsity out of the League of Evangelical Students, consult Lawrence Jones’ 1961 Yale University Ph.D. thesis The Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship in the United States. The words “pietist” and “more thorough theological orientation” are

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from Stacey Woods’ own recollection of that exchange in Chicago. Stonehouse does not refer to Machen’s trip to Chicago in February 1936 in his biography of Machen. Woods, Growth of a Work of God, 17. Compare what Reid wrote in “The Christian Professor in the Secular University” (5): “probably the most important facet of a Christian professor’s testimony is his own personal life. This does not mean, however, that his witness consists primarily in not doing certain things which some Christians condemn, especially in an Anglo-Saxon environment, such as smoking, the using of alcoholic liquors and the like. Students very easily see through someone who has a merely negative concept of life. They also cannot stand a false, syrupy type of piety which lacks a sound basis.” The Free Presbyterian Church was formed in 1893 by two ministers and 14,000 members (mostly Highland Scots) after a Declaratory Act, weakening the Free Church of Scotland’s commitment to its subordinate Westminster standards, was passed by the 1892 General Assembly. wsr to Paul Woolley, 9 January 1977, wsra, Box 5. Reid, preface to Reid, ed., John Calvin, 7. wsr to Harold Fickett, 25 November 1985, wsrff, pcc Archives, Don Mills, on. wsr to Cornelius Van Til, 23 June 1985, wsrff, pcc Archives, Don Mills, on. Reid, “J. Gresham Machen,” 117. Marsden, “Perspective on the Division of 1937,” 315. George Marsden, The New School Presbyterian Mind: A Study of Theology in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America, Ph.D. diss., Yale University, published as The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth Century America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970). Harold Fickett suggested this polarity in a letter to Reid (and other members of the classes of 1936–38) dated 2 October 1985. Reid reacted in a letter to him dated 25 November 1985, wsrff, pcc Archives. Cf Mark Noll, “Charles Hodge as an Expositor of the Spiritual Life,” in Stewart and Moorhead, eds., Charles Hodge Revisited, 193–94, where he speaks of Hodge’s “confusing commitment to common sense moral intuitions whereby [he] defended the validity of ethical intuitions but arbitrarily limited such institutions to those, and only those, that supported his dogmatic conclusions.” Stanford Reid’s father was not unaware of the danger of scholasticism in Reformed thought. The only caveat in W.D.’s encomium to “The Late Principal MacVicar as a Theologian” is that “he may never have thoroughly emancipated himself from the scholastic method of stating his theology.” (216). MacVicar was very dependent on

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Princeton Seminary and much of his lecture notes were adapted from Charles Hodge’s three-volume Systematic Theology. wsr to Harold Fickett, 25 November 1985, wsrff, pcc Archives. This sermon was preached on 23 February 1934, 3 June 1935, and twice in Philadelphia. Reid, Sermons 7, no. 10, “The Christian’s Effectual Calling,” wsrff, pcc Archives. Reid, Sermons 7, no. 8, preached 11 July 1937 in Côte St Gabriel and Mille Isles, qc, wsrff, pcc Archives.

chapter four 1 wsr, in conversations with the author while a resident at Douglas Hall in the 1950s. 2 Stanford, son of George Riddell, born 1 March 1937, presently living in Lachute, qc. 3 The author served as student minister in Mille Isles and Côte St Gabriel from May 1957 to January 1959. Stanford Reid, at the time, was the interim moderator of the congregation, chairing meetings of the elders and officiating at the sacraments as part of his Presbytery duties. 4 Reid, “Sons of God,” Sermons 8, no. 9 [John 1:12], preached in Côte St Gabriel and Mille Isles 17 July 1938, wsrff, pcc Archives. 5 Reid, “The Goal of the Covenant People: Sanctification,” Sermons 8, no. 10 [Ephesians 4:7–16], preached in Côte St Gabriel and Mille Isles 24 July 1938, wsrff, pcc Archives. 6 Dorothy Sayers, Creed or Chaos? And Other Essays in Popular Theology (London: Methuen, 1947), 1. 7 Earl Robinson came to Canada in 1938 as a reaction to what he perceived as the “bitterness” of those who had recently left the Presbyterian Church (usa). Interested in reception into the pcc, on the urging of wsr, he found that all the courses he was required to take at Presbyterian College he had already completed at Westminster and observed that “the Presbyterian Church in Canada was going the same way as the Presbyterian Church (usa).” Other than a course on the Gospel of John at Presbyterian College, he took a refresher course in chemistry at McGill at a cost of $150 in order to qualify for teaching in a Christian high school. In 1939 he joined the faculty of Stony Brook School for Boys in Long Island. He would later be ordained as a Baptist minister and taught at Gordon College and Gordon Divinity School, Boston. Interview with the author,12 August 1999, Manchester, nh. 8 J.H. Baxter 1924 address to the Scottish Church History Society, quoted by wsr in The Growth of Anti-Papalism in Fifteenth-Century Scotland, Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1941, 1.

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9 The thesis was never published, though three articles based on the three parts of the thesis were gathered by the University of Pennsylvania Press and published in 1944. 10 Arthur Charles Howland (1869–1952), born in upstate New York, Cornell class of 1893, received a Ph.D. in 1897 from the University of Pennsylvania. Before returning there to teach in 1904, Howland taught for five years at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. In 1934 he was named Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History. 11 John Life La Monte (1902–1949), Harvard Ph. D., came to the University of Pennsylvania in 1940 from the University of Cincinnati. Appointed Henry Charles Lea Professor of Medieval History in 1947, he published widely on the Crusades. The year he died his widely used textbook The World of the Middle Ages was published. 12 Conyers Read (1891–1959), with degrees from Harvard and Oxford, taught at the University of Chicago from 1920 to 1930. He went to Philadelphia to help run the family business and resumed an academic career in 1934 at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught until 1951. He was president of the American Historical Association in 1949, having been its executive secretary from 1933 to 1941. He is best known for the three volume Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth. He published various studies of Tudor England and the English Reformation and co-authored with his wife Clapham’s Elizabeth (1951). 13 William Edward Lunt (1882–1956) did graduate study at Harvard. From 1917 to 1952, he taught at Haverford College. His History of England (1928) was a standard text for colleges for two generations. His field was English medieval economic history. He won the prestigious Haskins Medal for his 1939 Financial Relations of the Papacy with England to 1327. 14 Events 7, no. 41 (May 1941): 378. 15 Reid, The Church of Scotland in Lower Canada, unnumbered page 3 of the preface. 16 Archibald Lee (1851–1921) was born in Torbolton, Scotland, but raised in Ulster. Lee emigrated to Canada as a young man. Determined to go into the ministry, in 1883 he graduated B.A. from McGill and the following year from Presbyterian College, taking the seven year course in four and a half years, “a record unequalled among Montreal students.” He started his ministry in Russeltown and Covey Hill in the Presbytery of Montreal and in 1886 went on to St Andrew’s Sherbrooke. During his four years there the congregation erected a striking new edifice on Wellington St. His time in each church was short: Kamloops, Prince Albert, returning to Quebec (Hemmingford), then St Elmo, Presbytery of Glengarry. In 1915 he retired from Rexton, nb, to Vankleek Hill, on, to

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help to raise two grandsons, Fraser and Archibald, on the untimely death of their father, Rev. Charles Allan Hardy (1877?–1913), a classmate at Presbyterian College with his son Rev. Henry Stewart Lee (1875–1941), Priscilla Reid’s father. (Telephone interview with Archie Hardy, Vankleek Hill, on, 10 October 2000 and letter 30 August 1999 from Eithne J. Lee Davis, Carrickfergus, ni). A & P, 1942, 576. Edward’s wife – Priscilla’s grandmother – was Eliza Stuart. She lived until 1942, dying at the age of 101 as the matriarch of a family of twelve, few of whom married. Priscilla was close to the maiden aunt after whom she was named and who bequeathed her home in Calumet to Priscilla when she died. Information provided by Rev. Dr Barry Mack, present minister of St Andrew’s Church, St Lambert. Priscilla Reid, diary 30 January 1948, wsrff, pcc Archives. Priscilla was elected president of the Synodical Society of Montreal and Ottawa of the Women’s Missionary Society in 1962 and was re-elected at Ottawa the following year to complete a two-year term. Priscilla Reid, diary 1 January and 20–28 March 1956, 80, 83, wsrff, pcc Archives. Edmund Prosper Clowney, who graduated from Westminster Seminary in 1942, to the author some time in the 1970s. Priscilla Reid, diary 20 March 1947, wsrff, pcc Archives. Ken Gowans, who would later handle logistics for Presbyterian Comment, Henry Tatchell and Alex MacLeod. Jacob Marcellus Kik (1903–1966) was born in Phillipsland, Netherlands, graduated from Hope College (1927), went on to do theological studies at Princeton (1927–29), and joined the exodus to Westminster Seminary, graduating in its first class (1930). He was ordained by the Presbytery of Miramichi, pcc that year and served in the Kent County, New Brunswick pastoral charge until 1933, and then in Dalhousie, New Brunswick (1933–37). He was called to Montreal’s Robert Campbell Church in September 1937. While in New Brunswick, he broadcast from New Carlisle, qc, and continued to have a radio ministry in Montreal, first over ckac and then ckvl. He left Robert Campbell Church in 1942 for full-time radio, journalism, and evangelistic ministries. He was called to Côte des Neiges Church in January of 1946 “at a time when they had experienced several disappointments. Under his aggressive leadership and his diligent preaching this congregation has made splendid progress.” The Presbytery minute of appreciation on his departure in 1952 noted that “He is a man of strong Presbyterian conviction, and has the courage of his convictions.” (Minutes, Presbytery of Montreal, 12 February 1952, Vol. 1951–54, 344). He served the Second Church (rca), Little Falls, nj,

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until he joined the editorial staff of Christianity Today in 1956. He wrote Voices from Heaven and Hell (1956), Ecumenism and the Evangelical (1957), Church and State: The Story of Two Kingdoms (1963) and his posthumous Eschatology of Victory (1971). Professor Frank W. Beare to J. Marcellus Kik, 29 June 1939, courtesy of the Rev. Dr Frank Kik, Fort Mill, sc. A 29 May 2001 email to the author from Professor Richard Vaudry of King’s College University, Edmonton, recalls Stanford telling him this in a conversation he had with Richard when he was a graduate student at Guelph in the 1970s. Hereward Senior in a conversation with the author, 26 April 2002. Adair, “The Teaching of History at McGill,” 58.

chapter five 1 “Religious Freedom Hit?” Montreal Gazette, 29 July 1942. 2 Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the party founded in 1932 by Frank Scott and others. The Canadian equivalent of the British Labour Party, it was the forerunner to today’s New Democratic Party. 3 MacInnis was son-in-law to J.S. Woodsworth, the founding president of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. 4 Montreal Gazette, 7 May 1942. 5 The letter was signed by S.A. Norris of Drummondville, qc. 6 Letter to the Montreal Gazette, 12 October 1944. 7 Reid stood in striking contrast to the usual image of anglophone Protestant church leadership in Quebec. As Nathan Mair states in “The Protestant Churches,” “Many Protestant churches, particularly in the cities and small industrial towns, thrived as temples of the owners and managers of industry and of financial institutions.” 8 Pierre Trudeau, “Epilogue,” The Asbestos Strike, James Bourke, trans. (Toronto: James, Lewis and Samuel, 1974), 329, as quoted by Stephen Clarkson and Christina McCall in their Trudeau and Our Times (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 54. 9 This was a personal reminiscence made to the author while at McGill in the 1950s. 10 At Fairmount Taylor each week he spent two afternoons and an evening visiting. The first year he was in the tmr he logged a thousand calls. 11 Maureen Forrester (1930– ) dropped out of school at thirteen to be a Bell Telephone operator to support her mother and three siblings paying for singing lessons. She studied under Bernard Diamant at the age of twenty and went on to a stellar career as a protégé of Bruno Walter. In 1983 she became chair of the Canada Council. (Cf her 1986 memoirs, Out of Character)

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12 Zechariah 4:6. 13 Based on I Corinthians 2:6–7: “We speak the wisdom of God ... the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” 14 Harold Cummings, James Simpson, and George Wilkie. Along with Howard Richardson, they became the church’s first elders, Harold Cummings being elected clerk of the Kirk Session. 15 David Scott, long-time minister of Knox Crescent Church. This magnificent edifice would burn down and then amalgamate with Kensington congregation in Notre Dame de Grâce. 16 The motion was moved by J.B. Maclean of Huntingdon and seconded by Malcolm Campbell, minister of First Church, Montreal. 17 In a speech given by E. Ritchie Clark at the fiftieth anniversary luncheon of the tmr Church, 30 October 1994. 18 Mary Pledger of Victoria, bc, to the author, 5 May 2001. 19 George Wilkie to wsr, telegram, 13 September 1945, wsrff, pcc Archives, scrapbook 1. 20 Reid usually kept approximate attendance figures for each service on that day’s sermon notes. 21 W.S. Reid, “The Settlement of a Canadian Seigneurie (1760–1855),” The Educational Record of the Province of Quebec, 123. 22 Aside from the 1959 ERPQ presentation, Reid used his Milles Îles research for a 1947 Canadian Historical Review article and entries in the Canadian Biographical Dictionary on Michel-Sidrac Dugué de Boisbriand (1965), Pierre Dugué de Boisbriand and Jean Petit (the latter with Bernard Weilbrenner) (1969), and Nicholas-Eustache Lambert Dumont (“in collaboration with wsr”) and Hubert-Joseph Lacroix (1987). 23 Evening Dispatch, 31 July 1947. 24 W.S. Reid, “Britain’s Peace Time War!” tmr Community News, 14 August 1947. 25 Monthly Record, Free Church of Scotland, November 1948. 26 Monthly Record, Free Church of Scotland, November 1948. 27 Cyril James to wsr, 22 January 1948, scrapbook 2, wsrff, pcc Archives. 28 Records of the Kirk Session of the Presbyterian Church in The Town of Mount Royal, 1: 21 courtesy Presbyterian Church of the tmr, Laird Blvd. at Beverley, Montreal. 29 W.S. Reid, “The Characteristics of a Successful Church,” text Ephesians 2:20–22, Sermons 20, no. 42. wsrff, pcc Archives.

chapter six 1 Reid, “Presbyterian Church in Canada 1,” 141–2. 2 Cornelius Van Til, The New Modernism, ix. 3 wsr to Stanley Glen, 1 January 1977, wsra, box 4.

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4 The Presbyterian Student December 1937 (vol 3, no. 1), 2. pcc Archives. 5 Frank Beare, “Against The Barthian Theology,” The Presbyterian Student, March 1937, 9–10. 6 wsr, The Presbyterian Student, December 1937 (vol 3, no. 1), 3. Beare’s response immediately follows Reid’s letter (with a strong personal attack: e. g., “he has never been introduced to the history of the Canon ... he brings in such tosh”) The Presbyterian Student, December 1937 (Vol 3, no. 1), 4–5. 7 wsr, letter to the Montreal Star, 18 December 1942 and Beare’s response, 1 February 1943. Reid had the last word on 4 February 1943. 8 Beare would maintain his old-time liberalism and scepticism to the end. For instance, in the final pages of his last book, The Gospel According to St Matthew (1981), he would write of the story about the guard at the tomb (Mt. 27:62–6), “Surely one of the most extravagant of inventions. Nothing like it is found in any of the other gospels ... this can only be regarded as a Christian fabrication.” (539). Days before his death in 1985, very ill, Frank Beare attended the Convocation of Knox College in Convocation Hall, University of Toronto, to receive an honorary dd. 9 wsr, letter to The Presbyterian Guardian, 1 September 1946, published 25 September, wsra, Box 7. 10 See An Historical Digest of the Work in Articles of Faith 1942 – 1967, the committee’s proceedings over twenty-five years published by the Presbyterian Church in Canada [n.d.] 11 Reid adds at the end: “This criticism has been prepared at the request of a number of men in the Presbytery of Montreal who met and discussed Dr Bryden’s statement. I believe that it represents fairly generally their point of view.” There is also a copy of the original statement in draft form with wsr’s comments written in the margin. Three typed sheets entitled “Commentary on Dr Bryden’s statement re Election and Predestination,” wsra, Box 7. 12 “Supplement to the Report of the Committee on ‘Articles of Faith’ — An Answer to Dr Reid’s Dissent,” wsra, Box 7. 13 wsr to Douglas C. McQuaig, 2 July 1977, wsra, Box 4. 14 wsr, quoted in Moir, Enduring Witness, 235. 15 Arthur Cochrane (1909–2002) born in Orillia, on, and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1932 and from Knox College in 1935. He completed his Ph.D. in Edinburgh two years later, while working with the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. He served pcc congregations in Tillsonburg and Port Credit, on, until he went to the Theological Seminary of the University of Dubuque 1948, where he remained until retirement in 1971. 16 wsr to John Moir, 6 February 1974, wsra, Box 4. 17 Reid scrapbooks, wsrff, pcc Archives, Don Mills, on.

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18 Montreal Star, no date appears on the clipping but it would appear to be circa April 1945, scrapbook 1, wsrff pcc Archives. 19 Moir, Enduring Witness, 253. 20 Reid, “The Presbyterian Church in Canada 1,” 143. 21 W.D. Reid wrote after visiting the 1902 Winona Lake, Indiana, Bible conference, “Another feature that pleased me very much, was the complete absence of all clericalism. Not a single clerical coat, or collar, or hat was to be seen on the ground. The priest idea of the minister has entirely disappeared from the American Church. Clerical mannerisms, and the clerical drawl were entirely wanting. The ministers that appeared there simply regarded themselves as men, whose duty and business it was to proclaim the Gospel of Christ to a lost world, and to save sinners, and they were deeply in earnest over their business” (“The Winona Conference,” 22–24). 22 Initially Presbyterian Comment seemed in favour of the amalgamation and the formation of a new Board of World Mission that consolidated the western division of the Women’s Missionary Society with the former General Board of Missions. Donald Nicholson in the August 1970 issue stated: “This decision was long over due and one that can only result in a more efficient missionary enterprise.” (“The 96th General Assembly,” August 1970, 1) Reid had cause later to regret the loss of independence that the decision involved when he saw what actually transpired. 23 Frost, McGill University, 2:286–90. 24 Gillson was an Anglican lay reader at Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal. 25 After his death in 1973, James’ commitment to a religious studies faculty at McGill would be honoured by his interment in the University Chapel in the Birks Divinity Faculty building on University Street, “for him a recognized and beloved place,” as his biographer described it. In spite of Reid’s opposition to the establishment of an interdenominational Divinity Faculty, it says much for the strength of their relationship that throughout the controversy he remained on good terms with James. 26 James Dick Smart (1906–1982), graduated from the University of Toronto in 1926 and Knox College in 1929. He was an early enthusiast of W.W. Bryden who had come to Knox in 1927. (Thus his article “Is Karl Barth’s Theology Extremist?” in The Presbyterian Student, March 1938 (vol 3, no. 3): 8–14.) He served churches in Ailsa Craig, Galt (Knox’s), and Peterborough before going to the U.S. in 1944 as editor-inchief of the Presbyterian Sunday school curriculum. He returned to Toronto in 1950 as minister of Rosedale Church. In 1957 he was appointed Jessup Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Union Seminary in New York. Shortly before retirement he returned to Rosedale Church,

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Toronto. He is best known for his book The Teaching Ministry of the Church (1954). James Smart, “Presbyterians Awake!,” 10, pcc Archives. F. Scott MacKenzie (1884–1970) was born in Ashfield, on, and graduated from McGill with first class honours in 1914. Further study was at Presbyterian College (1916) and Harvard (stm, 1917), (Th.D., 1918). He served in Sydney Mines, ns (1920–25) and Paris, on (1925–26) before being appointed to Presbyterian College in 1926. In 1929 he was made principal but in 1943, when Presbyterian College was merged with Knox for the duration of the war, it was reported to General Assembly that unhappiness at the college was due “in part to the failure of the Principal to enforce the necessary discipline.” His retirement as principal followed. Arthur Cochrane, “Presbyterians Awake!,” 2. Brown, Earthen Vessels and Transcendent Power, 212. Goforth, Goforth of China, 233. Ransom was known for his support of further Church Union. In April 1958, when he was assistant overseas secretary, working closely with Ted Johnson, he was quoted in the newspapers as saying at the meeting of the Synod of Hamilton and London, “It may no longer be possible for the Presbyterian Church to maintain a separate existence in Canada. The question of the formation of the United Church in 1925 was not settled once and for all at that time.” When the clerk of that synod verified the quotation, there was a furious outburst, including an overture to General Assembly from the Presbytery of Brockville, asking the Mission Board to repudiate the statement. Concern was expressed that the “sacrifice unexampled and a steadfast devotion” which had repaired “the ravages of the split of 1925” to Presbyterian overseas missionary effort were now being compromised. Mac Ransom was seen by Reid and others as someone whose position on ecumenicity mirrored that of Ted Johnson though Johnson himself was too shrewd to allow himself to be drawn into a public debate. Pamphlet titled both “Greetings to the Formosan Church” and “Regarding ‘The Church of Christ in China’ Movement,” wsra, Box 7. In the same box there is also a seven-page manuscript of Reid’s entitled “Church Union On The Mission Field” dated 3 May 1947. This was part of a pamphlet on Church Union written by Reid, Lyall Detlor, and Marcellus Kik. It was also sent separately to Formosa according to the notation at the top of the manuscript. Minutes of the Presbytery of Montreal, 1937–1947, 85–6. See “Perry Rockwood – The Lone Ranger Syndrome,” a paper read by David Elliott at the Canadian Society of Presbyterian History on 27 September, 2003, and soon to be published. Perry Rockwood (1917–) came from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, and had started at Presbyterian

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College in 1940 following a distinguished career at Acadia. Hectored one day by Frank Beare for his perceived fundamentalism in an incident in the College library, Rockwood recalls that “the students were taught mostly the modernistic view of the Bible ... at the close of the year I wrote to the Principal, giving seven reasons why I could not return to the college.” Rockwood transferred to Knox College, where he graduated in 1943. “The days at Knox were some happier,” he continued in his autobiography. “The teaching was still modernistic. The professors made light of evangelism and soul-winning. However, there were some fine spiritual students whose lives were an inspiration. They held weekly prayer meetings for souls. Some of them took an active part in Inter-Varsity work” (“Triumph in God: The Life Story of a Radio Pastor,” on the website, People’s Gospel Hour, www: tpgh.org/archive/books/triumph) He was assigned as ordained missionary to Thorburn and Sutherland’s River in Pictou Presbytery, NS, went on to St James’ Church, Truro, and was defrocked by his presbytery in 1947, following charges by Rev. Frank Lawson of St David’s, Halifax, of “following a divisive course.” Reid would later write (wsr to A. A. Murray, 26 October, 1948, wsra, Box 7) “With regard to Rockwood, there was little that could be done. Perry, himself, was unfaithful to his ordination vows. He refused to carry the case to a higher court, and instead pulled out and has since become a Baptist.” Rockwood became increasingly isolated and identified with Carl McIntire, Bob Jones, John R. Rice, and Ian Paisley. At the age of eighty-seven he still regularly broadcasts “The People’s Gospel Hour,” with a $3 million budget. The program continues to have a loyal following. Montreal Star, 24 March 1947. An unsent letter by wsr to the editor, Presbyterian Record, 17 April 1947, wsra, Box 7. MacKenzie, “Assembly Affirms True Presbyterianism” Presbyterian Record, August 1947, 173–4; Reid, “Letter to Editor,” Presbyterian Record, February 1948, 44; MacKenzie, “The Editor’s Mail Box,” Presbyterian Record, March 1948, 78. pcc Archives C. Ritchie Bell (1905–1982) was appointed sessional lecturer in pastoral theology and homiletics at Presbyterian College in 1946. wsr was chairman of the Committee on Academic Appointment of the Board of Management of the College, and wrote advising him of the committee’s nomination which Bell quickly accepted. In 1951 he resigned from MacVicar Memorial Church, Outremont, shortly after it rebuilt following a fire, in order to become the Lord Strathcona Professor of Pastoral Theology and Homiletics at Presbyterian College. He was called to the Lachute, qc, church in 1966, but continued as sessional lecturer, and from 1969 to 1973 was acting principal.

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40 C. Ritchie Bell to wsr, 8 June 1948, scrapbook 2, wsrff, pcc Archives. 41 wsr to Everett H. Bean, 22 December 1974, referring to another painful letter from Thomas Aicken of 28 November 1974, which Reid described to Bean as “a letter unlike any I have ever received before except one from Murray just before he left the Presbyterian Church.” wsra, Box 7. 42 Alexander A. Murray to wsr, 16 October, 1948, wsra, Box 7. 43 wsr to Alexander A. Murray, 26 October, 1948, wsra, Box 7. 44 The Christian and Missionary Alliance Church, then in downtown Ottawa. 45 From a conversation wsr had with the author in or around 1958. 46 Confidential letter of 21 March 1950 starting “Dear fellows,” wsra, Box 7. 47 Letter, 10 May 1950, wsra, Box 7. 48 wsr to A. F. MacSween, 7 September 1974, wsra, Box 4. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Montreal Star, 10 April 1952 wsrff, pcc Archives, scrapbook.2. 52 Montreal Gazette, 11 April 1952, wsrff, pcc Archives, scrapbook.2. 53 Montreal Star, 11 April 1952, wsrff, pcc Archives, scrapbook.2.

chapter seven 1 Montreal Star, 4 January, 1952; wsr to A. F. MacSween, 7 September 1974, wsra, Box 4. 2 Ibid. 3 Frost, McGill University, 2: 320. 4 Hereward Senior, interview with the author, 26 April 2002. 5 This is an observation from Hereward Senior, who may have been unaware that Brebner, in the discussion that followed Fieldhouse’s paper at the 1942 cha, stated that “most English-speaking historians are by inclination close students of Gilbert and Sullivan” (Brebner’s comments are published at the conclusion of Fieldhouse, “The Failure of the Historians,” 67.) 6 Hereward Senior, interview with the author, 26 April 2002. 7 United College was still called Wesley College in 1929. Lower’s sought to bring Canadian historical studies new intellectual respectability. As the author of North American Assault on the Canadian Forest, (1938), his Canada and the Far East (1940) and his textbook From Colony To Nation (1946), he had considerable influence in Canadian historical circles. 8 According to Lower, Fieldhouse found the politics of the National Labour party of Ramsey MacDonald congenial. In his memoirs, Lower

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recalled Fieldhouse saying at the time of Munich: “This country [England] seems to be coming to its senses after the recent enthusiasm for popping into wars anywhere and everywhere.” Lower, My First Seventyfive Years (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1967), 209. Fieldhouse, “The Failure of the Historians,” 52–70. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 65–6. Ibid., 66. Fryer would remain on as emeritus professor until his death in 1962 at the age of eighty-six. Phillips, Britain’s Past in Canada, 150. Ibid., 150. From the author’s class notes for History 420, 29 September 1958. Charles Bayley (1907–1998) was respected for his writing: his Age of Conflict went into two editions (1943 and 1949) in North America and one in Britain. Other titles were The German College of Electors in the Mid-Thirteenth Century (1949) and War and Society in Renaissance Florence (1961). After retirement he wrote a book on mercenaries in the Crimean War. C.C. Bayley to wsr, 16 November 1965, and wsr’s reply to Bayley, 22 November 1965, wsra, Box 1, File A. John I. Cooper (1905–1994) was a 1930 graduate of the University of Western Ontario and history gold medalist. He received McGill’s first History Ph.D. in 1938. He stayed at McGill until retirement in 1970, when he returned to Tillsonburg, where he and his wife had roots. He continued to write local history and played an active part in the local museum. Cooper’s Ph. D. thesis, French Canadian Conservatism: Principle and Practice, 1873–1891, anticipated later academic and research interests. Milos Mladenovic (1903–1984) was a native of Belgrade from which university he graduated in law and commerce. His Ph.D. was from the Sorbonne. He joined the McGill history department in 1950, leaving in 1964 to edit The New Review until retirement in 1974. A festschrift entitled Eastern Europe: Historical Essays appeared in 1969. “At one time in the 1970s, seven departments of history, two of political science, and one of Byzantine studies were chaired by his former students.” (J.L. Black, “Milos Mladenovic,” The Canadian Encyclopedia 2:1146). Phillips, Britain’s Past in Canada, 50. Harvey Bishop, email to the author, 10 February 2001. Compare The British Isles: A History of Four Nations by University of Pittsburgh Professor Hugh Kearney (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), or The Isles: A History by Norman Davies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), in which “a well-trusted historian seeks to

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restore a balance against centuries of Anglocentric scholarship, folding in the stories of Ireland, Scotland and Wales to challenge conventional notions of national identity” (New York Times summary review. 17 March 2002). Davies constructed his four-nation history on the “ruins” of the Whig interpretation of history and “Protestant providentialism and patriotism” which, he claimed in the book, supported it – a conclusion opposite to wsr from the same approach. Reid, Problems in Western Intellectual History Since 1500, ii. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Truth Unchanged, Unchanging, quoted in Reid, Problems in Western Intellectual History Since 1500, 654. “The University’s Social Task,” Free University Quarterly 6, no. 4, 1. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 9. wsr to Blaine Dunnett, 19 February 1974, wrsa, Box 3. Blaine Dunnett to wsr, 23 August 1977, wrsa, Box 3. Hereward Senior, interview with the author, 26 April 2002. Carter, God’s Name In Vain, 187. Marsden, The Soul of the American University, 429–44. Reid, “The Christian Professor in the Secular University,” 5.

chapter eight 1 Letter pasted into scrapbook 2, wsrff, pcc Archives. 2 Montreal Herald, 4 March 1954. 3 Reid, “The Coronation Is Over,” Reformation Today 2, no. 9, JulyAugust 1953, 10. 4 Herbert Heaton, review of W. S. Reid, Economic History of Great Britain, Canadian Historical Review 36, no. 1, (1955): 65. 5 “Address of Session, January 19, 1955,” Knox Church 1954 Annual Report, 21. 6 J.M. Laird to wsr, 13 October 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. 7 Some of this “Montreal gossip” may have come from Toronto. In February 1956 the author was cautioned by H. “Wilber” Sutherland about Reid’s influence. He maintained that McGill Inter-Varsity was wary of Reid for good reason. Wilber Sutherland (1928–1997) was a member of Knox Church, a friend and confidant of Archie Stewart and his family, and successor, at the age of twenty-four, to Stacey Woods as general secretary of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada. His outlook (as it developed) was very different, theologically and culturally, from that of Stanford Reid. Of Plymouth Brethren background, he became increasingly unhappy with institutional Christianity (always an issue in ‘parachurch’ ministry), and more open to ecumenical engagement than many

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evangelicals of the day. John Stackhouse claims that Sutherland’s view of the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26 was “strong and self-consciously Reformed.” See Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century, 103. Sutherland tended to be eclectic in substantiating his latest enthusiasm: he was certainly not Reformed as that term is generally understood. In 1963 Sutherland clashed with the minister of Knox Church and started a journey that led to his resignation from Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship six years later. He went on to found Imago, a creative Christian outreach to the artistic community. wsr to Paul Woolley, 12 October 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to A.J. Stewart, 7 October 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. J.M. Laird to wsr, 13 October 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to J.M. Laird, 4 November 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. T. Christie Innes, inducted 11 September 1939 at the age of twenty-nine, almost immediately fell afoul of the senior elders at Knox and particularly the trustees. He left to be director of the American Tract Society in New York city after a ministry of four years and four months. Robert Barr, called from Capetown, South Africa, after a three-and-a-half-year vacancy was inducted 9 April 1947 and died 11 September 1953 at fiftyeight while on health leave in Britain. He suffered from depression. (Andrew MacBeath’s Memorial Message, 14 September 1953, final page) Families of ministers at Knox were marked by tragedy: Murray Winchester was killed at Vimy Ridge, 9 April 1917; on 31 August 1931 twenty-year-old Elizabeth Inkster committed suicide; Peter Barr was a paranoid schizophrenic, hospitalized in Whitby. Finances were also a cause for bitterness. Alice Inkster wrote that her husband’s “retiring allowance was set at half what his predecessor’s had been in spite of the fact that during his incumbency the membership had more than doubled. After his death, one of his friends tried vainly to secure an allowance for his widow as had been done for an assistant’s widow shortly before. I appreciated his interest in my behalf but was relieved not to be under the obligation to Knox Church.” (Retrospect, 124) Part of the difficulty stemmed from the secretive manner in which the trustees conducted their business. The other trustees in 1954 were George Richardson as chairman, Charles McKechnie as secretary, C.H.J. Snider (1879–1971) (managing editor and well-known columnist of the Toronto Evening Telegram), and John Inglis. In her 1966 Retrospect Alice Inkster writes regretfully about her husband’s successors: “these new ministers [Innes, Barr, and Fitch] did not take the stand on prophetic teaching and the doctrine of the Second Coming, in particular, that Knox Church had stood for” (123). For sixty years, however, under Parsons, Barr, and Inkster, the congregation had

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been taught dispensational premillenialism and that perspective left a lasting impression. In a letter to the author 1 August 1987, Reid wrote: “From the experience of both my father and myself, I know that Knox is never prepared to accept as its minister a Canadian.” Alice Inkster, a staunch continuing Presbyterian, complained that “Knox Church after John’s retirement and especially after his death was, naturally different from what is had been ... the three incumbents had come fresh from overseas and, not having come through the church union struggle, did not realize the attitude of Knox toward it nor the shattered condition of the remnant in Canada. At any rate, under their ministry Knox did not give the help to the Presbyterian Church in Canada that its income from the Trust Fund made possible.” (Retrospect, 123) Elders Robert Trewin, George Fernie, Andrew S. Brown, H.E. Cooper, and Frank J. Whilsmith. Significantly, the letter is written on the stationery of Evangelical Publishers, where Stewart was managing director and trustee, and not on that of Knox Church. A.J. Stewart to wsr, 26 November 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to J.M. Laird, 4 November 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. J.M. Laird to wsr, 22 November 1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. F. Cyril James to wsr, 3 December,1954, wsrff, pcc Archives. Priscilla Reid, diary, 20 January 1955, wsrff, pcc Archives. John S. McBride (1915–1996) served Ephraim Scott Church from 1945 to 1964.While there, and subsequently at Summerside pei (1965–76), he built large new church edifices. In 1958 Stanford Reid opposed an elaborate second unit at Ephraim Scott: a more modest one was then erected. The church has gone from a membership of 550 in the 1950s to sixtyseven in 2002 with an average attendance of twenty-five. The church envelope secretary (who records contributions for year-end receipting) states that, in a church of dollar- or two-a-week members, Stanford contributed more than anyone else at ten dollars a week. (Douglas Kershaw, now of Belleville, on, to the author, his minister, in 1998.) Sermon on Matthew 6:33 preached in Chazy, New York, 8 April 1956, and a year later in the Divinity Hall at McGill (“seemed to go fairly well, although I think some didn’t like it”).The same sermon was preached later that same year at a drive-in service in Valois, qc, and finally at the Lake Placid Club in 1961. Reid recycled sermons that he felt were particularly well received or highly appropriate. St Andrew’s, Hamilton, was affiliated with the pcc. Rev. Victor Ford, away visiting his children in Canada. Ford had a high regard for Reid, which Reid reciprocated, based on Ford’s outreach and successful

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inclusion of wartime Azorean refugees who were unwelcome in many other Bermuda churches. MacArthur Shields, interview with the author, 14 March 2001. Carl Henry was a fresh voice, even though Billy Graham worried about whether he would be a fundamentalist hard-liner. See William Miller, A Prophet with Honor, 214. Miller, A Prophet with Honor, 216. From a six-page letter Graham wrote Henry immediately after the first issue appeared. Reid, “The Reformation and the Common Man,” 3–4, 17. Reid, “Review of Current Religious Thought,” 39. Reid, “Lessons for Our Times,” 30–2 [30–2]. Reid, symposium on “The Body Christ Heads,” 11–12. Reid, “Secret of the Scottish Reformation,” 7–9 [607–9]. Reid, “The Greatest Revival Since Pentecost,” 15–18 [79–82]. Reid, “Christians and the United Nations,” 10–12. Reid, “The Next Ten Years,” 45 [45]. Reid, “Preaching Is Social Action,”10–11 [838–9]; Reid, “Christian Faith and Biblical Criticism,” 11–12 [803–804]; and Reid, “Christ the Reconciler and Divider,” 14–16 [1196–1198]. wsr to William Muck of Christianity Today, 21 September 1985, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to K. Kucharsky, 16 March 1973, wsra, Box 7. wsr to Robert Den Dulk, 20 April 1976, wsra, Box 3. Christianity Today 26 (22 October 1982), 12–13. Letter from Daniel H. Martin of Aunesville, Oregon, Christianity Today (17 December 1982), 9. wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 11 February 1984, courtesy of Bernice Schrotenboer. Priscilla Reid to Mrs Helena Lee, 5 August 1956, wsrff, pcc Archives. Priscilla Reid, diary, 7 October 1957, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to W.J. Archibald, 3 January 1957; reply to wsr 26 February1957; wsr to W.J.Archibald, 2 April 1957, wsrff, pcc Archives. Cf Frost, The Man in the Ivory Tower, 220: “The major preoccupation of the years 1956–7 was a renewal of the political debates over federal grants to Canadian universities.”(Frost, The Man in the Ivory Tower, 220.) The question whether McGill should defy Duplessis and accept grants or not, impacted both faculty salaries and future expansion of the university. James was very much caught in the middle of the debate. Letter from wsr to Dean MacPhee of the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration, UBC, 20 June 1957. There is also a follow-up letter to Professor Soward of the Department of History, 27 July 1957, wsrff, pcc Archives.

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49 Priscilla Reid, diary, 6 September 1958, wsrff, pcc Archives. 50 wsr to Alex F. MacSween, 7 September 1974, wsra, Box 4

chapter nine 1 Both quotes are from Reid’s inaugural editorial, “Why Reformation Today?,”Reformation Today, 1,: no.1 (October 1951), 10. The associate editor was Donald Masters, professor of history at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, qc. 2 David W. Kerr, “Presbyterians Face Serious Issues” Reformation Today 1, no. 1 (October 1951): 13. David Westlake Kerr (1914–1969), a Canadian born in il, graduate of Queens (1934) and the University of Western Ontario (1942), where he was awarded the Governor’s General’s medal for highest standing. He did theological studies at Westminster Seminary, receiving the Th.B. (1945) and the Th.M. (1946). His Th.D. was from Harvard (1967). Ordained in the upna, he ministered in the KintyreWardsville, on, pcc pastoral charge from 1948–52. He accepted a call to Banff, ab, but left Canada in 1953, becoming professor of Old Testament Interpretation at Gordon Divinity School, north shore Boston, and serving first as associate dean and then, in 1962, as dean of the Faculty. Kerr and Reid enjoyed a cordial relationship and their friendship meant that Reid was a welcome guest at Gordon College and Divinity School and contributed several times to the Gordon Review, strengthening the school’s Canadian links. 3 David W. Kerr, editorial, Reformation Today 1, no. 3 (December 1951). 4 Reid, “Church Union Foundations.” 5 Reid, “Creed or Confusion.” 6 Reid, “The Sin of Vagueness.” 7 Reid, “History and the Study of the Scriptures.” 8 Priscilla Reid, Diary, 8 October 1956, wsrff pcc Archives. 9 Quincy McDowell (1899–1975), born in western Pennsylvania, graduate of Grove City College (1923) and Princeton Seminary (1927), ordained 1927 by Butler Presbytery (upna), and went immediately to Caledonia Church in PEI. From 1930 to1940 he was minister of St Andrew’s Sydney Mines. He served Maisonneuve Church in Montreal (1940–1952) and then went back to the upna as minister of First United Presbyterian Church, Providence, ri (1952–1968). 10 Mariano DiGangi (1923-), graduate Brooklyn College (1943) and Westminster Seminary (1946), was ordained by the Presbytery of Montreal in 1946, and served in Beckwith Memorial Church until 1951. The next decade he was at St Enoch Church, Hamilton, which enjoyed phenomenal growth during that period. During that time he was convener of the Board of Evangelism and Social Action of the Presbyterian Church in

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12 13 14

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Canada. In 1961 he was called to be successor to Donald Grey Barnhouse at Tenth Church, Philadelphia. He returned to Canada in 1967 and for the next eighteen years was associated with the Bible and Medical Missionary Fellowship (formerly zbmm, now Interserve). He also taught practical theology at Ontario Theological (now Tyndale) Seminary after its formation in 1975. He came out of retirement to be senior minister of Knox Church, Toronto (1989–1992). DiGangi was W.D. Reid’s caregiver at 619 Victoria Avenue in the mid–1940s. Minutes of the Presbytery of Montreal, unnumbered volume (July 1951 – August 1954): 518–19 (Jan.), 528–9 (Feb.), 545 (March), 556 (April), 570–1 (May), and unnumbered volume (14 September 1954 – 13 August 1956): 605 (Oct.) at Presbyterian College, Montreal. Minutes of the Presbytery of Montreal, 12 January 1954, volume for July 1951-August 1954, 519, found at Presbyterian College, Montreal. Montreal Star, 16 March 1956. Calvin Elder was at the time married to Valerie Ford, daughter of Reid’s friend Victor Ford from Bermuda and the son of John Elder, a missionary from British Guiana. St Giles Presbyterian Church, Baie d’Urfé, was located at the corner of Victoria Drive and Dorset Road. It closed on 3 November 1996. Montreal Star, 11 January 1956. Mair, “The Protestant Churches,” 214. He stated that “English Quebeckers (and most Protestants were in this group) have had time and energy to think only of survival.” Reid, “The Sin of Vagueness” Reformation Today 2, no. 4 (February 1953). C. Ritchie Bell, clerk of the Presbytery of Montreal, to wsr, 9 October 1958, scrapbook 2, wsrff, pcc Archives. A & P, 1958, 357–8. wsr to Alex F. MacSween, 7 September 1974, wsra, Box 4. G. Deane Johnston (1906–1978) was ordained in, and served, Central Church, Brantford from 1932 to 1971. 1966 moderator of the General Assembly, he was one of a group of World War II chaplains that dominated the postwar pcc. See J.A. Johnston’s “Geoffrey Deane Johnston” in Committee on History, Called to Witness, 4: 83–95. A & P, 1959, 575–6. The 1960 General Assembly, impressed by Reid’s skills in setting up the Administrative Council, asked him to serve on a special committee to look into allegations of misconduct by Rev. A. Ian Burnett, minister of St Andrew’s, Ottawa. Burnett was widely known as Mackenzie King’s minister and had conducted his funeral. The committee completed their work within a month, severing the pastoral tie. In the Ottawa Journal, 2 July 1960, Reid and the committee were quoted as stating that “Dr Burnett’s

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ministry was incapacitated,” that the situation was a “tragedy,” and that they “attached no blame to Dr Burnett.” Basil E. Howell (1902–1993) was born in England, on emigration joined the Plymouth Brethren in Montreal. In 1955 he was received into membership at Côte des Neiges Presbyterian Church. With the encouragement of his minister, Hector MacRury, he prepared for ordination at Presbyterian College. On early retirement as assistant comptroller of Bell Telephone in 1961, Howell accepted an ordained missionary appointment to St John’s, Duvernay. The following year he was appointed comptroller of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. He retired in 1971. On moving to Toronto, he joined Knox Church and was elected a trustee. As a result of the subsequent conflict there, he went on first to Willowdale and then Bridlewood Church as pastoral associate. He was a financial benefactor of Presbyterian Comment and the Renewal Fellowship Within The Presbyterian Church in Canada. Reid, “The Scottish Reformation,” addresses to the Synods of the Maritime Provinces, Toronto, and Kingston, October 1960, observing the 400th Anniversary of the Reformation in Scotland, 31. Ibid., 38. Montreal Star, 7 June 1955. Hilda Neatby (1904–1975) was born in England, raised in Saskatoon, studied at the University of Saskatchewan, and completed her doctorate at the University of Minnesota. She taught at Regina College, and from 1947 at the University of Saskatchewan, serving as head of the history department from 1958 to 1969. From 1969 to 1971 she was a member of the Massey Commission which set up the Canada Council and initiated federal grants to education. She is best known for her 1953 So Little for the Mind, a critique of Canadian education. She was a member of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Saskatoon, and became the first woman elder there, being ordained with her brother Leslie on 26 January 1969. Neatby and the Reids shared many interests. In her chapter “The Role of Presbyterian Women in Canadian Development” (111–34) in Centennial Committee pcc, ed., Enkindled By The Word: A Biographical History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Toronto: Presbyterian Publications, 1966), Priscilla Reid described Hilda Neatby as “The most outstanding Presbyterian woman in education today” (121). (Interview with Margaret Munro, Saskatoon, 16 February 2004) H. Keith Markell, History of the Presbyterian College, Montreal (1865–1986) (Montreal: Presbyterian College, 1987), 102. Ibid., 43. Stanford Reid was an elder commissioner from Miramichi Presbytery. Presbyteries unable to find a representative from amongst their laity had the privilege of appointing an elder from another area willing to attend

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on their behalf. He was a commissioner to General Assembly from the Presbytery of Montreal as a minister in 1944, 1946, 1948, 1950; as an elder in 1954, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962; as an elder representing Miramichi Presbytery, 1963; and as a minister from the Presbytery of Guelph, 1969, 1976, and 1979. He was to have been a commissioner in 1982 but there was a hiatus in procedure. Being present at ten assemblies in two decades gained him a certain notoriety and was considerably more than most ministers achieved. A & P, 1963, 399. “Report of the Committee on the Structure of Theological Education,” A & P, 1966, 321. “Report of the Committee on the Structure of Theological Education,” A & P, 1965, 386. Reid’s comments on Presbyterian Men in Canada were made in an interview with a reporter from the Daily Gleaner, 5 January 1962, Kingston, Jamaica. (Scrapbook 2. wsrff pcc Archives.) wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 25 November 1979, courtesy of Bernice Schrotenboer. wsr wrote just after James Ross Dickey succeeded Rayner: “Incidentally, the new editor of the Record is much more open to our expressions of opinion than Rayner was, and will publish whatever we send in if it is decently written. That is why I have had so many articles in the Record recently.” It is perhaps significant that the Comment came to an end a year later. See an article by the author on independent Canadian Presbyterian journalism in Channels 21, no. 1 (Spring 2003). Presbyterian Comment 1, no. 1 (January 1960), 2. David W. Hay (1905–1995) was appointed to the chair of systematic theology at Knox College, Toronto, by the 1940 General Assembly, but took up that position only in 1944 owing to wartime commitments as a chaplain in the Italian campaign. A graduate in arts and theology from Edinburgh, with studies in Germany, he was ordained a Church of Scotland minister in 1934. He had wide ecumenical interests: a delegate to the first wcc Assembly in Amsterdam (1948), he served as president of the Canadian Council of Churches for two years. As a member of the Committee on Cooperation in Theological Education in Toronto, he helped set up the Toronto School of Theology which brought together seven theological schools in Toronto and Hamilton. He was the recipient of five honourary degrees. He became moderator of the General Assembly in 1975, the year he retired from Knox College. wsr to David Hay and Allan Farris, 6 December 1955, wsrff, pcc Archives. “Whither the Presbyterian Church in Canada?” 21–2. There were four other articles, all by members of the circle that produced Presbyterian

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46

47 48

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Comment: “The Historical Background of the Ecumenical Movement” by Donald Campbell of Pierrefonds, qc; “Ecumenical Faith and Presbyterian Confession” by Louis DeGroot of Dixie, on; “Ecumenical Order and Presbyterian Ordination” by Everett Bean of Kensington, pei, and “Ecumenical Unity and the Lordship of Christ” by Hector MacRury of Côte des Neiges Church, Montreal. Reid, “Whither the Presbyterian Church in Canada?” 24. Donald Campbell (1928 – 1981), of Thorold, on, a 1954 Knox College graduate, was a strong confessionalist frequently allied with Reid. He served in Wanham, Alberta (1954–60), Pierrefonds, qc (1960–68), Sherbrooke (1968–75) and Ottawa (St Paul’s) (1975–81). Donald L. Campbell, “The New Book of Common Order and the Westminster Confession of Faith,” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 8: 1, 4, 5; no. 10: 2, 4. James Dickson to Alexander MacLeod, 9 April 1960, letter in possession of the author. James Dickson (1900 – 1967), a 1927 Princeton Seminary graduate, served the pcc as a missionary in Taiwan from 1927 – 1940 and 1946 – 1965 and in British Guiana from 1941 – 45. Most of his time in Taiwan he was principal of the Taiwan Theological Seminary, Taipei. See A.D. MacLeod, “The Centenary of James Ira Dickson,” Channels 16, no. 2 (Fall 1999-Winter 2000): 8–12. In letters to wsr of 7 April 1962 and 13 March 1964, wsrff, pcc Archives. Alexander N. MacLeod (1901–1994), Princeton Seminary class of 1927, Ph. D. Edinburgh (1938), served under the Presbyterian Church (usa) in China (1930–49), Hong Kong (1949–52), and Taiwan (1952–70). Dilwyn Evans, 25 March 1964, to wsr; wsr to Dilwyn Evans, 3 April 1964, wsra, Box 5. Dilwyn Thomas Evans (1915 – 1999) served churches in Winnipeg (Norwood), Ingersoll, on and Thornhill, suburban Toronto. He was missions superintendent for Western Canada from 1950 to 1953, missions superintendent for Saskatchewan from 1975 to 1980, and chairman, General Board of Missions, 1963 to 1966. wsr to Dilwyn Evans, 7 April 1965, wsra, Box 5. Peter Bush, “Biafra and the Canadian Churches,” 1. Andrew deWaal, Famine Crimes, 72–3. Dorothy Roberts to E. H. Johnson, 8 August 1968, File a-v–23, pcc Archives. Quoted in Bush, “Biafra and the Canadian Churches,” 9. Cf Bush’s comment: “Johnson was naive about how the church would be perceived. He failed to recognize that by choosing to intervene at all, meant that one side or the other would regard this as taking sides. Johnson was slow to grasp that words spoken and printed in Canada did have impact in Nigeria. He believed that the Canadian churches could remain above the political fray, holding a neutral position. There was a touch of

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paternalistic hubris to this belief” (“Biafra and the Canadian Churches,” 10).

chapter ten 1 Frost, The Man in the Ivory Tower, 176. 2. Ibid., 246. 3. Priscilla received a “Thank You From The Congress Wives To The Entertainment Committee,” consisting of sixteen verses of bad poetry, dated Montreal 5 September 1958. One of them sheds interesting light on the role some found appropriate for women at the time: “While others were conferring/On matters vast and deep/A few of us had hair-dos,/Still others had a sleep.” Priscilla did her best to elevate the quality of entertainment provided spouses. scrapbook 2. wsrff, pcc Archives. 4 Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914–2003) was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, 1957–1980. He was probably the ultimate net-worker among historians and enjoyed a stellar reputation until 1983 when he “authenticated” the so-called Hitler diaries for a newspaper who had bought them and in which he had a financial interest. 5 Ritchie Bell to wsr,11 March 1959, scrapbook 2, wsrff pcc Archives. 6 Montreal Star, 31 March 1959. 7 The Honourable Douglas Stewart had been over to Montreal for his brother James’ wedding. James and Charles, twins, were resident in Douglas Hall for three years and on the Douglas Hall Residents’ Council. 8 Duke of Argyll to wsr, 25 June 1959, scrapbook 2, wsrff, pcc Archives. Argyll’s son, John Campbell, the Marquis of Lorne and present duke, was resident in Douglas Hall for several years. Another resident at the same time was John MacLeod of MacLeod, present chief of the Clan MacLeod. At the time Reid seemed to attract Scots with titles to the residence. 9 Douglas Stuart, Earl of Moray, letter to the author, 27 August 1999. 10 Alexander Howatson, president of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra; Judge Rocher of Westmount; Jean Beraud, drama critic of La Presse; and Jean Vallerand, music critic of Le Devoir. 11 The election was on the basis of a recommendation of a corresponding member of the Society from that district. In this case it was A.B. Illiewitz that forwarded Stanford’s name to the Society. 12 Lake of Two Mountains Gazette, 14 July 1960. 13 The Reids purchased the boat from the father of Douglas Hall, resident Arthur Woodbridge Duff. His father was an “old China hand” resident in Hong Kong. 14 wsr to Melbourne Smith, editor of the International Historical Watercraft Collection, Annapolis, Maryland, 19 March 1975, wsra, Box 2, File 4.

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Prescott Journal, 27 July 1961. Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, 2 August 1961. Montreal Star, 19 August 1961. The new owner, M. d’Aoust, tied it up at the Commodore Yacht Club, installed wall-to-wall carpeting, and transformed it from what the Reids had made of it. Montreal Star, 7 June 1961. Montreal Gazette, 10 June 1961. Ibid. Montreal Star, 24 January 1962. Professor Maxwell Dunbar is the one quoted. “The Chairman informed the meeting about a letter which the Secretary received from Mrs W. Stanford Reid in which she made known her intention to resign from Jacques-Viger Commission because of ill-health. Mrs Reid has not been able to attend the meetings of the Commission for the last several months. The meeting accepted with regret Mrs Reid’s resignation and thank her for her services and wished her a complete recovery.” Minutes, 2 November 1964, Jacques-Viger Commission of the City of Montreal (Fonds de la Commission Jacques-Viger, vm34, Archives de la ville de Montréal). Romeo Mondello, director of the Permits and Inspections Department, City of Montreal, to Priscilla Reid,11 May 1965, scrapbook 2, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to E.A. Collard, 12 December 1972, wsrff, pcc Archives. Frost, The Man in the Ivory Tower, 279. Frost, The Man in the Ivory Tower, 280. Alisdair Stewart of Harrogate, Yorkshire, to the author, 15 September 1999. Reid, Skipper From Leith, 9. Ibid., 273. Athol Murray, English Historical Review (1963): 165. Maurice Lee, Jr, Canadian Historical Review (1963): 63. Maurice Lee, Jr, “The Scottish Reformation,” English Historical Review (1960): 135–6. Athol Murray, English Historical Review (1963): 64. Dr A.T. McInnis and Marion Miller of the Scottish Records Office. Montreal Star, 1 August 1962. La Presse, 28 August 1962. E.A. Collard, ed., “He Always Gave a Fair Hearing,” in The McGill You Knew, 262. Lawrence Surtees, “Lives Lived: Harold Rocke Robertson,” Toronto Globe and Mail, 16 February 1998. E.A. Stewart Reid, interview with the author, 3 January 1998. McGill Daily, 29 November 1962.

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42 Loose clipping from the Montreal Gazette, undated, probably early December 1962, scrapbook 2, wsrff, pcc Archives. 43 Hereward Senior, interview with the author, 26 April 2002. 44 As early as 21 May 1957, Paul Woolley presented to the WTS trustees a strongly worded minority report from a committee to appoint an executive secretary: “I believe that the Seminary should as soon as possible secure as a chief executive officer a person not now a member of the Seminary staff ... At least a majority of the persons elected by the Board ... under the plan which went into effect that fall are distinctly unhappy about the operation of the plan. The situation is deteriorating and unless effective action is soon taken, the spirit of harmony and accomplishment which has characterized the operation of the Seminary in loyalty to the ideals set forth by the founders will vanish. We will soon be at the point of being broken up into groups or individuals mutually suspicious of the intentions of one another and suffering under the unfairness of other members” (Board of Trustees Minutes, 21 May 1957, WTS Archives). 45 Van Til maintained a strict Creator-creature distinction in his apologetic and maintained that God’s knowledge and human knowledge were never the same. Two plus two equals four meant something different to the Christian than it did to the non-Christian because human knowledge must be analogical to God’s knowledge and only Christians could think God’s thoughts after God. When Clark was turned down for ordination by the General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, he joined the upna. In 1958 when the upna merged with the pcusa he affiliated with the rpc(es). Clark had considerable influence on a whole generation of Wheaton graduates who formed the new Fuller Theological Seminary, including Carl Henry, who called him “one of the profoundest evangelical Protestant philosophers of our time.” Henry, “A Wide and Deep Swath,” in John Robbins, ed., Gordon H. Clark Personal Recollections (Jefferson, md: Trinity Foundation, 1989), 56. 46 John Frame in his Cornelius Van Til, 146. The entire quotation is as follows: “Van Til’s analysis, therefore, is insightful, but it is not successful as a critique of Clark. We have seen several times in this book that Van Til seems to be at his worst when he interacts with Clark. This suggests to me that the difference between them was not merely theological or academic. But I would not care to speculate as to the precise nature of the problem between them.” 47 Extract of from the Minutes of the Trustee Board of Westminster Theological Seminary for 6–7 May 1947 when wsr is elected to the board, Class of 1950, by recommendation of the Nominating Committee: “Resignations of A.K. Davison, Lawrence Gilmore, Ed Rian, Messrs. J. Enoch Faw and Matthew McCroddan. The Bd of Trustees appreciates many of

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49 50

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the services which these men rendered to the Seminary and records its sorrow that they find themselves out of accord with the policies of the institution. The Board is grateful to announce that the following have been elected and have agreed to serve as Trustees of the Seminary: Revs. M.J. Kik [sic], Robert S. Marsden, Nicholas Monsma, W. S. Reid and Mr Glenn A. Andreas. The Board affirms its determination to continue to promote the great design of the Seminary, namely, to train men for the gospel ministry, who shall truly believe and cordially love, and therefore endeavor to propagate and defend, in its genuineness, simplicity and fullness the glorious system of religious belief and practice which is contained in the Word of God and summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms ... covets prayers ... past year has been one of great blessing spiritually and materially in the life of the institution ... larger numbers ... future is filled with hope in Go and the Word of His grace. Under His grace may we be led forth in triumph.” Silva, “A Half Century of Reformed Scholarship,” 255: “W. Stanford Reid, an early alumnus of the seminary and an authority on the Scottish Reformation, contributed a dozen essays over a period of thirty-seven years (1943 to 1980).” On 12 May 1948 at the nineteenth commencement exercises of WTS he spoke on “The Christian Message to a Culture in Crisis.” “The Westminster Graduate: Pastor, Missionary, Chaplain, Professor, Editor” (Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, September 1960). This interview appears to have been kept very secret as not even the date emerges from the Reid papers. References to it simply mention that it happened. No record of what transpired exists and all the participants are now dead. LeRoy Oliver to wsr, 4 January 1965, wsra, Box 5. wsr to LeRoy Oliver,14 January 1965, wsra, Box 5. wsr to LeRoy Oliver 1 February 1965, wsra, Box 5. wsr to LeRoy Oliver 22 February 1965, wsra, Box 5. Edmund Prosper Clowney (1917-), born in Philadelphia, where his family were members of Westminster Presbyterian Church. A graduate of Wheaton College (1939) and Westminster Seminary (1942), with graduate study at Yale, he joined the Westminster faculty in 1952 as professor of practical theology, following Orthodox Presbyterian pastorates in New Haven, Connecticut, LaGrange, Illinois, and Westfield, New Jersey. He was president from 1966 to 1982 and left the seminary (and the denomination) in 1984 for the Presbyterian Church in America. Since then he has served in Charlottesville, Virginia, and as a professor (1990–2000) at Westminster West Seminary, which he set up while president of Westminster (East) at Escondido, California. He is now retired in Charlottesville.

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Like Reid, he made a name as a contributor to Christianity Today in its early days, as “Eutychus.”

chapter eleven 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30

wsr to Murdo MacKinnon, 26 January 1965, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Murray Ross, 21 December 1959, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Professor J.M.S.Careless, 28 March 1964, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Dean H. D. Woods, 5 May 1964, wsrff. pcc Archives. Murdo MacKinnon, interview with the author, 23 March 2001. Janet Brain of Hawkesbury, on, to wsr, 6 July 1966, wsra, Box 1. wsr to Richard Vaudry, 25 November 1985. wsrff, pcc Archives. David Murray, interview with the author, 1 February 2000. J. D. MacLachlan (1906–1981) botanist and Harvard graduate joined the faculty of Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph, in 1939 and became president in 1950, president of the Federated Colleges in 1964, and was named president of the new University of Guelph later that year. He retired in 1967. Murray, Hatching the Cowherds Egg, 49. Along with Aubrey Hagar, vice chairman of the board of education; former chairman Gordon Tiller; and oac alumnus Ralph Boyce. Eugene McCarthy, “University Making Impact on Guelph,” KitchenerWaterloo Record, 14 September 1965. Ontarioan, 5 October 1965. Murray, Hatching the Cowherds Egg, 91. wsr to Percy Smith, 29 October 1970, wsra, Box 2, File 4. Terry Crowley, letter to the author, 29 August 1999. wsr to Norman Bindoff, 19 November 1965, wsra, Box 1. The m.a. in 1961 and the Ph.D. in 1963. David Murray, interview with the author, 10 January 1998. Murdo MacKinnon, interview with the author, 23 March 2001. Robert Wilson, email to the author, 4 April 2001. Ibid. David Murray, interview with the author, 1 February 2000. Kenneth Davis, email to the author, 5 April 2003. In an email to the author, 5 April 2003. David Murray in an interview, 1 February 2000. Stewart Gill, The Rev. William Proudfoot and the United Secession Mission in Canada (Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: Edward Mellen Press, 1991), Introduction. David Murray, interview with the author, 10 January 1998. Guelph Daily Mercury, 13 October 1965. Professors Reid, Brodie, K.J. Duncan, Evans, J.A. McIntyre, Nicholson, and Straka.

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Guelph Daily Mercury, 5 February 1968. Scottish Colloquium Proceedings 2 (University of Guelph, 1969), 2. Scottish Colloquium Proceedings 3 (University of Guelph, 1970), 28. Scottish Colloquium Proceedings, 6 (University of Guelph, dated 1972 though containing the proceedings of the sixth colloquia on April 29, 1973), 9. The sentence has a curious typographical error in which a “not” is omitted: “Although always recognized, [Knox] has been one of the moulders of western constitutional thought.” Reid never thought that John Knox got the recognition he deserved. Elizabeth Ewan, “In Memoriam,” Scottish Tradition 22 (1997): 5. Ibid. Guelph Daily Mercury, 26 October 1965. Reid, “The Pamphlet Collection on the Church of Scotland’s Disruption of 1843,” 38. University of Guelph News Bulletin, 25 July 1969. William Winegard (1925–), Guelph’s second president (1967–1975), came from the University of Toronto, where he had been an undergraduate, and received graduate degrees in metallurgy. He went on to federal politics, becoming Canada’s first minister for science, and retiring in 1993. Terry Crowley, letter to the author, 29 August 1999. Minutes of the Senate of the University of Guelph, 17 December 1968, Archives of the University of Guelph. Guelph Mercury, 12 February 1969. wsr to L.F. MacRae, 16 April 1970, wsra, Box 2, File 10. Murdo MacKinnon, interview with the author, 23 March 2001. Terry Crowley, letter to the author, 29 August 1999. McKillop, Matters of Mind, 567. wsr, Christmas 1970 letter, in possession of the author. John Harold Plumb (1911–2001), professor of modern English History (1966–74) and Master of Christ College (1978–82) at Cambridge. From a working class background, he had a reputation as an outspoken curmudgeon with highly sophisticated culinary and intellectual tastes. A specialist in eighteenth-century English history, he was the authority on the first three Georges (1714–1820) and Robert Walpole. The other two were Professor Craig and Professor Furber, both Canadians. As quoted in undated memorandum to the Appraisals Committee of the ocgs found in wsra, University of Guelph. Michael Collie to Dean H. Armstrong, 10 February 1971, with a report and a subsequent rebuttal from A. Margaret Evans as the head of the history department, 22 February 1971. wsrff, pcc Archives. Citation to William Stanford Reid on his appointment as Professor Emeritus, University of Guelph, 5 October, 1979. wsrff, pcc Archives.

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chapter twelve 1 Constitutional and Legal History of England (1955), History of England (1957), and Heritage of Mankind, A History of the World (1960). 2 wsr to Norman Kotker, 6 July 1974, wsra, Box 6. 3 “Trumpeter of God by W. Stanford Reid,” sent to Goldwin Smith, 30 July 1969, wsra, Box 6. 4 Tom Davis to wsr, 9 October 1968, wsra, Box 6. 5 wsr to Norman Kotker, 9 January 1970, wsra, Box 6. 6 Goldwin Smith to wsr, 6 January 1973, wsra, Box 6. 7 wsr to Norman Kotker, 16 March 1973, wsra, Box 6. 8 Christina A. Newstead, corresponding secretary, Women’s Missionary Society (wd), Presbyterian Church in Canada, to PLR, 26 June 1971, William Stanford Reid Family Fond, scrapbook vol. 4. 9 Letter from Rev. Dr Lorna Hillian Raper, of Kelowna, BC, 12 January 2002. 10 “Stanford himself was captivated by intellectual history, but when interest in that subject declined to the point that his fourth-year seminar course attracted fewer than four students, it had to be dropped. In retrospect, this development says less about Stanford, who was always concerned with treating students equitably, than it does about changing scholarly and societal tastes as social history undermined the prominence previously held by intellectual history.” Terry Crowley to the author, 25 August 1999. 11 Reid, “New Type Of Christian College.” 12 wsr to James M. Houston, 12 March 1975, and Houston’s reply, 21 March 1975, wsra, Box 5. 13 James Houston to wsr 12 December 1975, Stanford Reid Archives, University of Guelph, Box 5. 14 1972 Christmas letter of wsr and PLR. 15 Toronto Star, 4 January 1972. 16 Reid, “John Knox and His Interpreters,” 15. 17 Ibid., 17. 18 Ibid., 18. 19 Ibid., 23. 20 A.L. Farris to wsr, 8 December 1972, scrapbook 4, wsrff, pcc Archives. 21 Gerald Winkleman, assistant to the president, to wsr, 11 February 1975, scrapbook 4, wsrff, pcc Archives. 22 J.D. Mackie to wsr, 28 August 1974, scrapbook.4, wsrff, pcc Archives, “Thank you very much for sending me your book, and thank you still more for dedicating it to me. I’ve begun it and I’m sure I’ll read it all with both pleasure and profit. I’m now old and don’t go about much.” 23 Woolley to wsr, 24 October 1974, wsra, Box 5. In his review in the

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Westminster Theological Journal, 37:2, 268, Woolley says “We are indebted to Dr Reid for a scholarly, sound, and at the same time attractive, presentation of John Knox to the late twentieth century.” Farris, review of W S Reid, Trumpeter of God, Sixteenth Century Journal 7 no. 1 (April 1976): 102. Presbyterian Record, November 1974. Calvin Theological Journal 10, 220–3. Christian Scholar’s Review, 217–18. The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 68, no. 2 (Autumn 1975): 97. The Scotsman, 22 February 1975. New York Times, 4 August 1974. wsr to Alice Trapasso, 16 August 1974, wsra, Box 6. Trapasso had left off the credits for the pictures in the book. Roland Bainton, American Historical Review 80 (1975): 1340. G.R. Elton to Norman Kotker, 8 September 1974, scrapbook 4, wsrff, pcc Archives. Church History 44 (1975): 260–1. Richard L. Greaves, Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation, Washington, dc: Christian University Press, 1980, 228n54. Norman Kotker from wsr, 25 June 1975, wsra, Box 6. Norman Kotker to wsr, 4 May 1977, wsra, Box 6. wsr to George and Dorothy Kemble, 28 November 1974, wsrff, pcc Archives. “University of Guelph Library Archival and Special Collections: The Scottish Collection,” internet, www.lib.uoguelph.ca/archives/Scottish /information.htm, 3. Nancy Stook, Special Edition Collection Update, University of Guelph Library, no. 7, 1983, 5. Priscilla Reid, diary 12 April 1975, wsrff, pcc Archives. Priscilla Reid, diary 14 April 1975, wsrff, pcc Archives. The recognition pleased wsr: “Actually the whole thing came as a complete surprise, but pleased me not merely because they wanted to confer the degree on me, but because I felt that it was a recognition by a Christian institution that those of us who are teaching in ‘neutral’ institutions are also doing a valuable piece of work in the Kingdom.” (wsr to author and his wife, 29 August 1975, in his possession) Terry Crowley, to the author, 25 August 1999. Recently T. M. Devine, University Research Professor at Aberdeen, took exception to Reid’s exaggerated comment in his introduction to The Scottish Tradition that “the history of Canada is to a certain extent the history of the Scots in Canada.” Divine states that though the book “contains a wealth of useful information” it “proceeds to regale the reader with over 300 pages of largely uncritical text about the great Scots who made Canada what it is

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today.” Scotland’s Empire, 1600–1815 (London: Allen Lane, 2003), 189. Financial Post, 11 December 1976. Margaret Evans, interview with the author, Waterloo, on, 17 August 2000. wsr to H.J. Maitre, 29 July 1972, wsra, Box 3, File 12. wsr to George and Dorothy Kimble, 5 January 1975, wsra, Box 5. wsr to Don Munson, 29 December 1975, wsra, Box 5. wsr to George and Dorothy Kimble, 5 January 1975, wsra, Box 3. wsr to Colin Bain, 10 October 1973, wsra, Box 3. wsr to his graduate students, 12 August 1978, wsrff, pcc Archives. Letter to wsr from Terry Crowley, 13 October 1979, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to H.S. Armstrong, 10 October 1979, wsrff, pcc Archives. Citation to William Stanford Reid on his appointment as professor emeritus, University of Guelph, 5 October, 1979. wsrff, pcc Archives. Margaret Evans to wsr, 11 October 1979, wsra, Box 5. wsr to Margaret Evans, 14 October 1979, wsrff, pcc Archives.

chapter th irteen 1 St Andrew’s, Knox, St Paul’s, and the extension charge Westminster (with which St Paul’s later merged). 2 Darch, A Journey Shared. 3 Thus wsr to the author, 11 September 1982: “The closer I look at the situation, the more I am convinced that there is a group in the church who want to use this issue of women’s ordination to force the truly Reformed element out of the church. From their point of view, this would be a wonderful issue, as with the present-day attitude to women’s rights, those leaving would simply be tagged as a group of men who have not yet entered the twentieth century. If we are going to be forced out, I think that it should be on a more basically theological issue.” 4 A & P, 1981, 90. 5 Reid, “The Canadian Ninety-fifth General Assembly,” Reformed Ecumenical Synod News Exchange 6, no. 7 (29 July 1969): 532. 6 On hearing of his nomination by Lindsay Peterborough Presbytery for moderator wsr wrote: “It was a bit of a shock and from a personal point of view it is the last thing that I want since it will foul up all my plans for the next eighteen months. However, I shall let my name stand and if the Lord wants me in the position I shall take it on. It might be that I could do much for the evangelical cause in the church.” wsr to Clare Martin, 25 November 1973, wsra, Box 5. On the day the vote was announced, and Hugh Davidson had been elected, he wrote: “I am mighty relieved

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that I did not get it, as I have so much on my plate ... I only let my name stand because my wife had a strong conviction of my duty and after some days of propaganda I succumbed to her persuasiveness.” wsr to Donald Campbell, 9 April 1974, wsra, Box 1, File 3. wsr to William Campbell, 21 June 1966, wsra, Box 1. Mariano DiGangi, “The Confession of 1967,” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 10 (May 1965): 1. W.S.Reid, “The ‘Draft Statement of Faith,’” Presbyterian Comment 6, no. 4 (September 1966): 2. A. Donald MacLeod, “A Twenty-fifth Anniversary: The Silver Jubilee of October 17, 1966,” Channels 8, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 7–10. Louis L. DeGroot (1922–1979) was a missionary to Taiwan (1949–55), then ministered in Kemptville, on, Montreal (St Matthew’s), Mississauga (Dixie), and Edmonton (St Andrew’s). He was chair of the Board of World Mission (1972–73). L.L. DeGroot to the author, 12 October 1966, letter in his possession. wsr to Mariano DiGangi, 15 September 1966, wsra, Box 1. W.S.Reid, “A Confessional Church,” Presbyterian Comment 6, no. 8 (April 1967): 3. “Report of the Joint Committee on Articles of Faith and the Committee on Inter-Church Relations,” A & P, 1967, 281. wsr to Robert Strimple, 30 October 1967, wsra, Box 2. wsr to William Campbell, 26 July 1967, wsra, Box 1. Everett H. Bean (1916–1991) born in Sherbrooke, qc, raised in New Haven, ct, attended Wheaton and Calvin Colleges, graduated from Westminster Seminary in 1941, ordained in1943 by the pcc; served Bathurst, nb (1941–1953), Kensington, pei (1953–1962) and finally Sydney (Bethel), cb, ns, until retirement in 1984. Clerk of the Atlantic Synod for thirty-nine years, he was also a clerk of the General Assembly from 1975 to 1987. He had considerable influence and was highly respected in the denomination. Everett H. Bean to wsr, 30 June 1969, wsra, Box 1. wsr to Everett H. Bean, 3 July 1969, wsra, Box 1. Reid, “The New Ordination Questions.” Kenneth Stewart to wsr, 22 February 1974, File 3, wsrff, pcc Archives. Ben Short to wsr, 7 May 1969, wsrff, Box 2. Ben Short (1932-), a member of the Plymouth Brethren, joined St Enoch Church, Hamilton, on, while studying at Westminster Seminary. Appointed by the pcc as an ordained missionary to Creemore, on, in 1965, he was called to Sunny Corner, nb, in 1968. He left the pcc with part of his congregation for the rpc(es) (later the pca) in 1970. He served Westminster Church, Sydney, ns, 1970–2, and subsequently completed doctoral study in history at

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Guelph. His thesis, The Political Thought of the Cameronian Covenanters, was supervised by Ted Cowan. In 1985 he was given permission to work outside the bounds of the pca and founded and pastored (1988–2003) the Cambridge, on, Orthodox (Christian) Reformed Church, founded in 1988 by Christian Reformed dissidents alarmed by what they perceived as heretical trends in the denomination. wsr to Clare Martin, 30 September 1973, wsra, Box 2. wsr to the author, 22 January 1975. Thomas Aicken (1946–), grew up in the Haney, bc, pcc. On graduation from Knox College in 1971, he was appointed ordained missionary to Bathurst, nb. His wife, Marian McPhee, was the daughter of an elder at Fairview Church, Vancouver, where they had met. Since 1990 he has been the minister of the New Westminster, bc, Orthodox (Christian) Reformed Church. Marian Aicken’s brother, Howard McPhee, graduated from Westminster Seminary in 1973 and, following ministry in Tabusintac, nb, resigned from the denomination on 19 September 1977. Thomas Aicken to wsr, 20 November 1974, File 7, wsrff pcc Archives. wsr subsequently described Aicken’s correspondence as having “hit out in all directions ... an almost hysterical letter.” wsr to Don Campbell, 12 March 1975, File 7, wsrff pcc Archives. wsr to Everett H. Bean, 22 December 1974, File 7, wsrff pcc Archives. Douglas Codling (1936–) came from the Melfort, Saskatchewan, congregation and graduated from Knox College in 1966. Ordained in 1968 by the East Toronto Presbytery following an assignment at the Scott Mission, he was appointed to Little Narrows and Whycocomagh, ns, which he served to 1971. He was in Sunny Corner, nb, a church already divided, from then until 1977. He then went to Vancouver and helped organize the group who left Fairview Church. He is presently a retired minister of the Presbyterian Church in America. James Codling (1949–) was a 1976 graduate of Knox College who took further study at Covenant and Concordia Seminaries in St Louis. Ordained in 1976 by East Toronto Presbytery, he was appointed to Elphinstone and Okanais aboriginal reservations in Manitoba. He resigned in 1978 and is presently a minister of the Presbyterian Church in America teaching at Mississippi State University and Trinity Theological Seminary, Newberg, in. Don Codling (1941–) came from Prince Albert, sk, married Lois Hawkes, daughter of Rev. Everett Hawkes. On graduation from Knox College in 1970 he was appointed to Bathurst and Tabusintac, nb. He left in1973 to study first at Westminster Seminary, then at Free University of Amsterdam (Stanford Reid generously supporting him). He resigned from the denomination in 1981 following three years at MacKay Church, Timmins, on, which then split. His father-in-law also left the pcc at the same

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time. He went on in 1983 to establish the Bedford, ns, Presbyterian Church in America, where he presently serves. According to Presbyterian polity, if a presbytery could not find elder commissioners within its own bounds it had the privilege of nominating elders from other presbyteries. Reid qualified as a member of the kirk session of Ephraim Scott Church, Montreal, an advantage not being in the active ministry. Evan Arnold Bottomley (1947–) came from the Lloydminster, sk, Presbyterian Church. After graduation from Westminster Seminary in 1974, he was appointed to St James Church, Newcastle, nb. In 1978 he was called to Chalmers Church, Calgary, ab. Two years later, with a minority of the congregation, he organized the Covenant Evangelical Presbyterian Church in that city. In 1988 he founded the North Ridge Church (pca) in Calgary where he now serves. Paul Walker (1939-) was the son of James Walker, clerk of session, Knox Church, Toronto, for many years. He was appointed to Chambly, qc, church extension in 1966, went on to St Paul’s Glace Bay, ns, in 1968, and was called to Fairview Church, Vancouver, in 1973. He is now a minister of the Presbyterian Church in America, and serves as hospital chaplain and assistant minister at Faith Reformed Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, formed by those who left Fairview Church in 1977. wsr to Howard McPhee, 14 November 1974, wsra, Box 6. wsr to Doug McQuaig, 2 July 1977, wsra, Box 6. Ibid. A & P, 1968, 365. Brian Fraser, Church, College, and Clergy, 190. wsr, “The Canadian Ninety-fifth General Assembly,” Reformed Ecumenical Synod News Exchange 6, no. 7 (29 July 1969): 533. wsr, letter to the author, 27 April 1973. Letter of wsr to a select group marked “Personal and Confidential,” 28 October 1973. In 1995 the Mid-America Seminary moved to Dyer, in. “Personal and Confidential,” minutes of a 12 November 1973 meeting, in the possession of the author. wsr to Blake Walker, 25 November 1973, wsra, Box 2, File 1. He writes: “I was a little appalled at Don MacLeod’s suggestion that we must immediately begin to think of bringing in people from Britain ... I feel that perhaps we Canadians had better stop being colonials even in the theological field and start doing a little thinking for ourselves.” Jesse Ketchum, a tanner from Buffalo who came to Toronto in time to buy property at the bottom of the market owing to the War of 1812, gave the first Presbyterian church in Toronto for a sanctuary, manse, and glebe, lots which are now in the square block of Richmond, Bay, Queen,

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and Yonge Streets. James Harris, the first minister, married his daughter Fidelia. The gift was set up in such a way that it could never be sold and five trustees were given, within the broad framework of the Trust, absolute discretionary power over its expenditure subject only to their reelection at the next annual general meeting. When the church relocated to lots south of Harbord on the west side of Spadina Ave. in 1907, the site was taken over by the Robert Simpson department store. The lease was for twenty-one years and the income, settled in 1951, did not take into account the rapid increase in the value of the property. It went from $75,000 to $400,000 and is now $1.2 million. The property is presently leased by the Hudson’s Bay Company. David Hay’s speech was delivered 20 April 1975, and the passage to which he referred was Jeremiah 36. wsr was one of many evangelicals who found the speech divisive. The author’s father, who was there on that occasion, called it “rank liberalism” in his diary for the day. wsr to Allan Farris, 5 March 1976, File 3, wsrff, pcc Archives. Allan Farris to wsr, 17 March 1976, File 3,wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Keith Clifford, 3 September 1977, File 6, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Juliet Werts, 29 July 1978, wrsa, Box 5. wsr to William Klempa, 4 April 1979, wrsa, Box 5. wsr to Joseph McLelland, 18 August 1979, wrsa, Box 5. From the citation, provided through the kindness of Caroline O’Connor, secretary to the principal of Presbyterian College. A & P, 1979, 20. Daniel MacDougall Sr, diary, 30 May 1979, quoted by permission. The Special Committee’s report, A & P, 1980, 62 [8002]. Knox Church first ordained women as ruling elders on 2 March 2003. “R.F.C.P. News Update,” May 1980. Exchange of letters between Robert Bernhardt and Stanford Reid, 27 February 1980 and 8 March 1980, File 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Everett H. Bean, 17 August 1980, File 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Everett Bean, 9 June 1980, File 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Mariano DiGangi, 24 January 1981, File 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Donald Campbell, 13 October 1979, File 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Professor John Moir, 6 February 1974, Box 4, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 22 December 1984, courtesy of Bernice Schrotenboer.

chapter fourteen 1 Reid, John Calvin, 318–19. 2 Reid, “Our Debt to John Calvin,” 4. The author’s copy has been waterdamaged and is therefore incomplete.

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Reid, “After Four Hundred Years,” 2. Reid, “John Calvin, Early Critic of Calvinism, part I,” 74 Reid, “John Calvin: the Father of Capitalism?,” 19–25. Reid, “John Calvin, Early Critic of Capitalism, part I,” 74–81, and “John Calvin, Early Critic of Capitalism, part II,” 9–12. Reid, review of Gordon Marshall, Presbyteries and Profits, 123–4. Reid, “John Calvin: the Father of Capitalism?,” 23 and “John Calvin, Early Critic of Calvinism, part II,” 12. Reid, “The Ecumenism of John Calvin,” 30–43. Ibid., 43. Reid, Calvin and Tradition, 5. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 18. Reid, “Justification by Faith according to John Calvin,” 290–307. The citation is from Institutes 3, no. 11:16. Ibid., 306–7. Reid, “Every Reformer in His Humour,” unpublished article, wsrff, pcc Archives. Reid distinguishes between humour in the medieval sense and the modern idea of humour as precipitating laughter. Reid is quoting from Institutes 3, no. 19:9. Cf Calvin’s Traité des Scandales, 223–4, for Calvin’s view of Rabelais later in life. Rabelais responded in kind, calling Calvinists “formless, illfavored monsters.” (Cf. W. J. Bouwsma’s John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (New York: oup, 1988), 13. Reid, “John Calvin, Pastoral Theologian,” 73. Reid, review of John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism, 180. “I would like to bring out the book to honour Paul Woolley rather than in memory of him.” wsr to Robert Knudsen, 7 February 1981, Box 6, wsrff, pcc Archives. Gerard Terpstra to wsr, 17 July 1981, Box 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. wsr to Martin van Elderen of Eerdmans, 1 March 1980: “You will notice from the table of contents I have tried to give some unity of theme to the whole book, since I feel that so many festschrift are rather irrelevant since their various essays seems to have no relation to each other, and while there may be some good ones, there are also some rather poor ones which have no particular relationship to a central idea,” Box 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. George Marsden to wsr, 1 April 1977, Box 7, wsrff, pcc Archives. Cf Reid, review of R. T. Kendall Calvin and English Calvinism in Christian Scholar’s Review, 10, no. 4: 355–6. John B. Fitzmeier, review of John Calvin: His Influence in the Western World, in Trinity Theological Journal 4 (ns) (1983): 126–30.

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27 H. Evan Runner (1916–2002). Born in Oxford, Pennsylvania and raised in West Philadelphia. Runner graduated from Wheaton College in 1936 and Westminster Seminary in 1939. He did graduate work at Harvard Divinity School from 1941 to 1943, then taught high school English and Latin at the Christian Reformed Church related Eastern Academy in Paterson, nj, from 1943 to 1946. In 1951 he received a Ph.D. from the Free University of Amsterdam, his thesis being The Development of Aristotle Illustrated from the Earliest Books of the Physics. He was professor of philosophy at Calvin College from 1951 until his retirement in 1981. 28 Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America), 196. 29 wsr to Gary North, 14 December 1974, wsra, Box 5. 30 wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 4 July 1970, courtesy of Bernice Schrotenboer, 31 Review of G. Marsden and F. Roberts, eds., A Christian View of History, 267. 32 Guillaume Groen von Prinsterer was a leader of the eighteenth-century Reveil, the Dutch equivalent of the evangelical awakening in England. He was a leading figure at court as secretary of the cabinet and royal archivist. He was chosen by Runner as a heroic Dutch figure from the past who called the Netherlands to reclaim its spiritual heritage. 33 Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America, 196. 34 It was estimated that while strict Calvinists comprised ten per cent of the population of the Netherlands at the time, the percentage among the émigrés was considerably higher, probably thirty percent. Many were from the farms of the eastern Netherlands and these Friesians were particularly known for their zealous and pious conservatism. 35 A & P, 1948, 40. 36 Reid, ed., “Whither the Presbyterian Church in Canada?” 24. 37 Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America, 196. 38 Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) taught at the Free University of Amsterdam from 1926 to 1965 as professor of the Philosophy of Law, Encyclopaedia of Jurisprudence, and Old Fatherland Law. See William Young, “Herman Dooyeweerd,” in Creative Minds in Contemporary Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1946), 270–305, and C.T. McIntire, “Herman Dooyeweerd in North America,” in David Wells, ed., Reformed Theology in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 172–188. 39 Reid had said in his speech, “People should be dealt with as people, in true Christianity, not as numbered pigeon holes or another scalp for a Christian’s belt.” 40 The Albertan, 12 November 1955. 41 Van Ginkel, “Assimilation, Transformation, or Opposition?,” 54. 42 Frontispiece to Place and Task of an Institute of Reformed Scientific Studies (Hamilton: Guardian Publishing, n.d., (1961?)). The author is not cited, presumably it is F. Guillaume.

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43 F. Guillaume in the Preface to Christian Perspectives 1960 (Hamilton: Guardian Publishing), 1–3. 44 Runner, “Scientific and Pre-Scientific,” Christian Perspectives 1961, 11. 45 Peter Y. De Jong, Christian Perspectives 1960 (Hamilton: Guardian Publishing, 1960), viii. 46 W.S. Reid, “Absolute Truth and the Relativism of History,” 115. 47 Professor McIntire declined a request to be interviewed for this book. 48 McIntire, “Herman Dooyeweerd in North America,” 72–87. 49 wsr to C.T. McIntire, 23 June 1974, wsra, Box 5. 50 wsr to Gary North, 14 December 1974, wsra, Box 5. 51 wsr to Blake Walker, 25 November 1973, wsra, Box 5. 52 wsr to Colin Atkins, 16 June 1979, wsrff, pcc Archives. 53 wsr to James Younger, 11 January 1967, wsra, Box 2, File 1. 54 wsr to Ralph Moellering, 7 May 1977, wsra, Box 5. 55 Paul Schrotenboer (1922–1998), was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church in 1955 and served in Ottawa (John Knox), 1955–60; St Catharines (Maranatha), 1960–64; and was general secretary, Reformed Ecumenical Synod, from 1964 to1988. 56 wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 5 December 1966, courtesy Bernice Schrotenboer. 57 wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 12 February 1985, courtesy Bernice Schrotenboer. 58 G.N.M. Collins, The Days of the Years of My Pilgrimage (Edinburgh: Knox Press, 1991), 129. 59 G.N.M. Collins (1901–1989) was minister of St Columba Free Church, Edinburgh, 1938–63, and subsequently professor church history at the Free Church, College, Edinburgh, until his retirement in 1982. He was twice moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, in 1949 and 1971. 60 W.S. Reid, editorial, Reformation Today 1, no. 1 (October 1951): 11. 61 Jan Dengerink, “The International Association: Its Foundation and Growth,” International Reformed Bulletin 1 (April 1958): 8. The seventeen countries were Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, The Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the usa. 62 wsr to Bernard Zylstra, 6 June 1966, wsra, Box 2, File 1. 63 W.S. Reid, “International Reformed Conference: Zeist 1964,” Presbyterian Comment 5, no. 6 (October 1964), 2. 64 wsr to Mr Kriel, who had attended the conference, 21 July 1977, W. Stanford Reid Archive, University of Guelph, Box 5. 65 Reid, “God’s People as Ferment,” 5. 66 Ibid., 8. 67 Gordon Fish, one of a committee of four organizing the conference, interview with the author, 13 September 2002.

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68 wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 25 June 1984, courtesy of Bernice Schrotenboer. 69 Burtchell, The Dying of the Light, 809. 70 Jan D. Dengerink to wsr, 13 July 1987,wsrff, pcc Archives.

chapter fifteen 1 David Fraser (1938–1991) was the only child of Donald and Betty Fraser. Donald was almost an wsr acolyte, an elder at the tmr Church, and host in his home of various study groups where wsr was teacher and mentor. David entered Westminster in 1959 after studying science at McGill. David’s faith became unsettled while at Westminster and he dropped out after a year. This was very painful for his parents, who understandably blamed Westminster, and their friendship with wsr tailed off. An amateur pilot, David’s distinguished career as an inventor and entrepreneur in the Philadelphia area was cut short by a horrific plane crash. Generally, anecdotal evidence suggests that the seminary had, at this time, a number of students with psychological and emotional problems. Its isolation – geographically, intellectually, educationally, and ecclesiastically – may have exacerbated this. Rigorously academic, the seminary offered little instruction or help in counselling, except one course in poimenics (i.e., shepherding). Until Jay Adams joined the faculty full-time in 1970, no one was charged with this as their sole responsibility. Adams’ novel approach, which he called “nouthetics,” looked askance at non-Christian psychologists and psychotherapists. Paul Woolley was emphatic that the seminary was a graduate institution, not a place for spiritual formation, which, he felt, was more properly left to the student’s church. But often students at Westminster Seminary were in ecclesiastical limbo, having incurred denominational wrath by choosing to study there. 2 wsr to Edmund P. Clowney, 1 May 1977, in wsrff, pcc Archives. 3 N. Thomas Wright, Bishop of Durham, has recently been an active participant in the justification debate. For example, in What St Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), he wrote: “‘Justification’ in the first century was not about how someone might establish a relationship with God. It was about God’s eschatological definition, both future and present, of who was, in fact, a member of his people ... In standard Christian language, it wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology, not so much about salvation as about the church” (119). 4 Paul Schrotenboer to wsr, 24 September 1969, courtesy of Bernice Schrotenboer. 5 wsr to Paul Schrotenboer, 8 July 1969, courtesy of Bernice Schrotenboer. 6 Quoted in Norman Shepherd’s contribution, “John Murray as a Teacher,” to Murray, John Murray of Badbea, 90.

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7 Norman Shepherd, “John Murray as a Teacher,” in Murray, John Murray of Badbea, 141. 8 Norman Shepherd, “The Relation of Good Works,” 15, r/sa, wts. 9 wsr to Donald Graham, 3 April 1977, r/sa, wts. 10 Letter and five-page paper, “Faith and Justification,” sent to the trustees from wsr, 28 May 1977, r/sa, wts. 11 Quoted by Reid, “Faith and Justification,” 1–2, from page 51 of Shepherd, “The Relation of Good Works,” r/sa, wts. 12 Ibid., 2. 13 Norman Shepherd, “The Covenant Context for Evangelism,” 3: 71. 14 Ibid., 3:73. 15 Sinclair Ferguson, review of John H. Skilton, ed., The New Testament Student and Theology, in The Banner of Truth, July-August 1977 (issues 166–7): 63. 16 wsr to A.W. Kuschke, 15 August 1977, r/sa, wts. 17 Ibid. 18 wsr to Edmund P. Clowney, 1 May 1977, wsrff, pcc Archives. 19 Ibid. 20 Minutes, Westminster Seminary faculty meeting of 3 May 1977. Westminster Seminary Archives. 21 wsr to Donald C. Graham, 3 April 1977, r/sa, wts. 22 Among them Dillard, Frame, Gaffin, and Van Til. 23 Godfrey, Hughes, Knudsen, Miller, and Robertson. 24 wsr to the board of trustees, 28 May 1977, r/sa, wts. 25 Arthur W. Kuschke to wsr, 12 October 1977, r/sa, wts. 26 Undated letter from wsr to Donald C. Graham, probably early April 1978, r/sa, wts. 27 Robert Godfrey to Stanford Reid, 7 April 1978, r/sa, wts. 28 Philip Hughes, “Some reasons for dissenting from the majority report of 21 April 1978 on the subject of justification submitted by the Faculty to the board of Westminster Theological Seminary,” 1–2, r/sa, wts. 29 “Remarks of E.P. Clowney, read at the April 25, 1978 Faculty Meeting,” r/sa, wts. The handwritten statement, seven pages in length, was marked by wsr though it is not clear how widely it was distributed. The paper trails off at the end: “The misunderstanding that has already been created, however, among the members of the faculty who have struggled to understand ... ” One would like to know how the sentence ended. 30 Donald Graham to wsr, 2 May 1978, r/sa, wts. 31 Shepherd, “Thirty-four Theses on Justification in Relation to Faith, Repentance and Good Works.” 32 Robertson, “The Current Justification Controversy” (unpublished, 1983), 23–4, r/sa, wts. 33 Reid, “Memorandum Re Norman Shepherd’s Views on Justification,” circulated to the trustees, undated but apparently from early January 1979,

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r/sa, wts. Thesis 32 reads “The election of God stands firm so that sinners who are united to Christ, justified, and saved, can never come into condemnation; but within the sphere of covenant life, election does not cancel out the responsibility of the believer to persevere in penitent and obedient faith since only they who endure to the end will be saved (Matt. 24:13. Mark 13:13).” wsr to Murray Forst Thompson, 30 January 1979, r/sa, wts. Ibid. Joel Nederhood, letter to the board of trustees, 26 January 1979, r/sa, wts. Joseph Memmelaar, letter to the board of trustees, 29 January 1979, r/sa, wts. Signed by Everett H. Bean, Calvin K. Cummings, Donald Graham, Terry Geiger, Norman Hoeflinger, Charles Krahe, W. Stanford Reid, Kenneth Ryskamp, Paul Settle, and Murray Forst Thompson, trustee emeritus. “Your omission at the Jubilee indicates more of the Shepherd syndrome and that they weren’t after the best. I hope to poke on this failure more than once, without indicating you care two thrips.” Donald Graham to wsr, 23 August 1979, r/sa, wts. wsr to W. Robert Godfrey, 1 November 1979, r/sa, wts. wsr to Cummings, Graham, Krahe, Settle, Sinclair and Pappas, 16 March 1980, r/sa, wts. Knudsen stated about faculty deliberations: “It also discussed the Committee’s statement that in its opinion the Board was premature in stating that there was no further need to investigate these views. The Faculty passed a motion to the effect that the Board had not been premature. It also passed a motion recommending to the Board that it not accede to the Committee’s request to confer with Mr Shepherd in the fashion proposed. It rejected a motion to recommend to the Board that the Committee be dissolved. It was thought better to leave entirely to the Board . It received the impression that the Faculty majority regards any further inquiry into Norman’s views unnecessary, indeed as an unfortunate and even perverse prolongation of a case that should be regarded closed.” Professor Robert Knudsen to wsr, 30 January 1980, r/sa, wts. Norman Shepherd, “The Presbytery of Philadelphia of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church,” 15 September 1980, r/sa, wts. “Statement by Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones concerning the discussion on justification at Westminster Seminary,” 13 February 1980, r/sa, wts. Roger Nicole, “Brother Shepherd,” 3 November 1979, r/sa, wts. Quoted in Robertson, “The Justification Controversy,” 34, r/sa, wts. Gregg Singer, response to inquiry of October 1979, 23 October 1979, r/sa, wts. Charles Gregg Singer (1910–2002) taught history at Catawba College, Salisbury, nc, from 1958 to 1978. One with Stanford in a small

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Notes to pages 270–3

48 49 50 51

52

53

54 55 56

57 58

59

377

coterie of Reformed academic historians in secular universities, in later years he increasingly became identified as a right-wing ideologue with books such as The Unholy Alliance and A Theological Interpretation of American History. It was direction Reid did not take. Letter from wsr to Cummings, Graham, Krahe, Settle, Sinclair and Pappas, 16 March 1980, r/sa, wts. Robertson, “The Justification Controversy,” 37, r/sa, wts. In a letter to the trustees, 14 May 1980, r/sa, wts. John Kinnaird to trustees, 19 May 1980, r/sa, wts. In 2003 the opc General Assembly heard an appeal from Kinnaird. The opc Presbytery of Philadelphia had sustained a ruling by an interim session at his church that he was guilty of teaching a doctrine of justification by faith and works. After lengthy debate at the General Assembly, and a stirring speech in Kinnaird’s defence by Richard Gaffin, Kinnaird was vindicated by a 3 to 1 majority. The next day John Galbraith, 90 years old, presented a protest (“The decision of the Assembly to sustain the appeal ... allows interpretations of Scripture that are out of accord with the whole body of the Word.”) The Shepherd debate, with even some of the same players, lives on. The others were Calvin Cumming and Everett H. Bean, letter of 9 June 1980. attaching a copy of the minority report and a request from a post office box in Jenkintown, pa, for a copy of other “basic documents which are now public,” r/sa, wts. The first letter of protest against Reid, Cumming, and Bean’s letter was dated 7 July 1980 and was addressed to all trustees. A further and lengthier letter dated 15 September 1980 was sent to all members of the opc Presbytery of Philadelphia. A letter from Joseph Mammelaar, December 1980, r/sa, wts. wsr to T.J. Pappas, 7 September 1980, r/sa, wts. wsr “To the members of the Board of Trustees of Westminster Seminary who registered their negative votes on the exoneration of Norman Shepherd,” 17 December 1980, r/sa, wts. Memo from wsr to Cal Cummings, Don Graham, and Everett Bean, 18 February 1981. The exact number, and the mailing list, were matters of conjecture: “In mid-May the students and faculty of Westminster Seminary received a communication dated May 4 ... copies of that letter have been sent also to ministers and sessions of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and the Presbyterian Church in America, though efforts to secure the exact mailing list have not been successful.” Raymond Dillard, Chairman of the wts faculty, to wsr, 3 June 1981 r/sa, wts. The open letter was sent from the same address as the correspondence

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60

61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76

77

78

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Notes to pages 273–8

the previous summer that had so incensed Shepherd. Letter found in the r/sa, wts. Letter of 4 May 1981, in possession of the author who received a copy in the mail as did many other Canadians of his acquaintance at the same time. Clowney to “Dear brother(s) in Christ,” 22 May 1981, in possession of the author. Donald Graham, two-page letter to “The Faculty” on the letterhead of McIlwain Memorial Presbyterian Church, 8 June 1981, r/sa, wts. Letter from Arthur W. Kuschke “To the 45 signers of the letter of May 4,” 15 July 1981, r/sa, wts. Two-page letter signed by forty of the original forty-five, 3 May 1982, and addressed “To the Board and Faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary,” r/sa, wts. Arthur W. Kuschke, “To the 45 signers,” 15 July 1981. Letter from Donald Graham, 8 June 1981, r/sa, wts. wsr to Philip E. Hughes, 24 March 1981, r/sa, wts. Robertson, “The Current Justification Controversy,” 47, r/sa, wts. Edmund Clowney, paper presented to the trustees of Westminster Seminary, 11 November 1981, 7, r/sa, wts. Ibid. wsr to W.I. Wilson, 27 August 1981, r/sa, wts. Robertson, “The Current Justification Controversy,” 56, R/SA WTS. Letter signed by seventeen students, “Fellow Students and Alumni,” 14 December 1981, 1, r/sa, wts. wsr to Edmund Clowney, 7 February 1982, W/SA, WTS. Letter from R.D. Knudsen to the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary protesting its action of 1 February 1982, 8 February 1982, r/sa, wts. wsr to Meredith Kline, 29 May 1982. Kline’s response to Reid, dated 7 June, was: “My understanding (Knudsen via Godfrey) ... on the various special appointments for 1982–3 they first passed a procedural motion ... to consider as a separate bloc those who had signed ... They then managed to discover some official reason why each of these persons should not be reappointed in 1982–83.” r/sa, wts. wsr to Edmund Clowney, 18 June 1982, r/sa, wts. George Fuller, Clowney’s successor as president, stated to the author in an interview 18 November 1998, that Reid’s interpretation was comprehensible: “understandably this is the way he read it.” Richard Gaffin stated to the author in an interview 18 November 1998, “When someone assesses you after considerable discussion as blind to the compromise of the gospel, as Stanford Reid and his friends were saying, that doesn’t make for a comfortable relationship ... [wsr] was certainly not the faculty’s favorite person.”

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Notes to pages 278–83

379

79 wsr to Robert Godfrey, undated, r/sa, wts. 80 Transcribed by the author from a tape of a lecture given at the Presbyterian Theological Hall, Melbourne, 28 February 1984. 81 Norman Shepherd was called in 1983 to Minneapolis (First crc). Six years later he went to South Holland, il (Cottage Grove crc) from which he retired in 1998. In his The Call of Grace, published in 2000, Shepherd demonstrated that his views have not changed since he left Westminster Seminary. He writes: “Faith is required, but faith looks away from personal merit to the promises of God. Repentance and obedience flow from faith as the fullness of faith. This is faithfulness, and faithfulness is perseverance in faith. A living, active, and abiding faith is the way in which the believer enters into eternal life.” The Call of Grace (Phillipsburg nj: P & R Publishing, 2000), 50.

chapter sixteen 1 In a letter to Heather and Stewart Gill, 2 March 1985, courtesy of Stewart Gill. 2 Ibid. 3 Stewart Gill, “Preserving Presbyterians: Links Between Canadian and Victorian Anti-Union Forces in the 1920s,” read at the Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity meetings held at Macquarie University, Sydney, 1993. 4 John Lawrence Rentoul, letter, [Canadian] Presbyterian Record 50, no. 7 (July 1925): 204. 5 Trevor Pryce to wsr, 22 October 1965, wsra, Box 2, File 4. 6 John J.T. Campbell to wsr, 28 March 1969, wsra, Box 1, File C. 7 Samuel McCafferty to wsr, 14 May 1973, wsra, Box 3, File D. 8 wsr to Samuel McCafferty, 4 December 1973, wsra, Box 3, File D. 9 According to the code of the Australian Presbyterian Church, the procurator must be a barrister. 10 Gill, “Preserving Presbyterians,” 14, quoting R.S. Ward, The Bush Still Burns, 449. 11 Ibid. 12 Rowland S. Ward, The Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, Sydney: Evangelical History Association, 1994. 13 wsr to Samuel McCafferty, 1 February 1974, wsra, Box 3, File d. 14 The Melbourne seminary was known as the “Presbyterian Theological Hall” until 1987, when, on moving to its new quarters in Surrey Hills, it became “the Presbyterian Theological College.” The word “Hall” is used throughout this chapter as the name of the institution when Reid taught there. 15 The original site was to have been the former deaconess training college in Rathdowne Street, Melbourne, but this was deemed unsuitable for the

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16

17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

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Notes to pages 283–9

theological hall. Maxwell Bradshaw was particularly anxious to use most of the Assembly Hall building because he had sought the building in the division of the church’s property at union and now needed to demonstrate that, having been granted it by allocation from the Property Commission, most of the space was being used. Max Putnam (1920–1995), graduate Waterloo and Knox College. Ordained by the pcc in 1951, he served as Assistant at Kitchener (St Andrew’s), Fenelon Falls, Listowel, and, from 1958 to 1976, St Andrew’s Kingston. He was moderator of the General Assembly in 1972. He returned to Canada in 1978 and served in Vancouver (West Point Gray) and Gananoque, on, to retirement in 1985. A one-time professional hockey player, Putnam was a popular minister and pcc evangelist-at-large who wanted a fresh start after conflict at St, Andrew’s, Kingston, went to Australia in a self-imposed exile for two years. So called by Marcel Pradervand, general secretary of the World Presbyterian Alliance, in 1962 on a visit there. See Roger Thompson, “Pastor Extraordinaire,” S. Emilsen and W.W. Emilsen, eds., Mapping the Landscape, 172. Roger Thompson, “Pastor Extraordinaire,” S. Emilsen and W.W. Emilsen, eds., Mapping 7he Landscape, 178. He was also described as “neo-orthodox.” Ibid., 180. wsr to Stewart Gill, 21 January 1984, courtesy of Stewart Gill. W.S. Reid, preface to Look to the Rock, 5. Priscilla Reid, diary for 10 June 1980–31 December 1981, 21 July 1980, wsrff pcc Archives. Reid, Look To The Rock, 5. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 71. Brisbane Telegraph, 30 July1980. wsr to the Lyman family, 23 August 1980, courtesy of Graham Lyman. Ibid. wsr, Christmas letter, 1 December 1980. University of Guelph Guelph Alumnus 14, no. 1. Allan Harman, email to the author, 28 June 2002. Harman’s full-time appointment was to commence the beginning of 1978. Priscilla Reid, 1982 diary, 1 January 1982, wsrff, pcc Archives. They were met at Vancouver by Rex and Juliet Werts. Rex had been an elder in the tmr Church and was a long-time friend and supporter of

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Notes to pages 289–93

38

39 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

381

Stanford Reid. Juliet was a sparring partner of Stanford’s, as she was with many men. Swanton was minister at Hawthorn from 1940 to1968. The congregation then called David Simpson, a minister of the United Free Church of Scotland. He fell out with Bradshaw. With union looming, Bradshaw determined the church should be left vacant. He was concerned about boarders at nearby Scotch College, whose compulsory attendance had made up much of the congregation. He chose Lyman to come in 1984. The boarders never returned, however. Graham Lyman, letter to the author, 21 May 1997. Mairi Harman to wsr, 4 November 1981, and wsr in reply 11 November 1982, wsrff, pcc Archives. The 1982 Minutes of the Victoria General Assembly. Reid, “Church History as Our Heritage,” talk recorded 1 March 1982, Library of the Presbyterian Theological College, Melbourne. PLS, diary, 20 February 1980, wsrff pcc Archives. “Mairi [Harman] commented that she hoped the students would not expect other professors to follow our example.” Priscilla Reid, diary, 26 March 1982. wsrff pcc Archives. David Burke, email to the author, 19 August 1998. wsr to Graham and Beth Lyman, 20 June 1982. Courtesy of Graham Lyman. The Australian Church had agreed to the ordination of women at its 1974 General Assembly when the continuing Presbyterians had walked out. In 1988 an alteration to the articles of agreement returning to the pre–1974 position was sent down to presbyteries and assemblies, and when the returns showed strong support the decision was taken at the 1991 General Assembly to allow those women already ordained to continue in office but to disallow any further ordinations of women. James Muillan, clerk of the N.S.W. General Assembly, Presbyterian Church of Australia, to wsr, 25 May 1982, wsrff, pcc Archives. Allan Harman to wsr, 30 July 1982, wsrff, pcc Archives. Harman to wsr, 30 July 1982, wsrff, pcc Archives, 1992–5036–1–6. wsr to the author, 12 March 1983. Transcribed by the author from a tape recording of the lecture. wsr to Graham Lyman, 18 June 1983, courtesy of Graham Lyman. wsr, Christmas 1983 letter. Author’s copy. wsr to Stewart Gill, 7 April 1984, courtesy of Stewart Gill. Reid, “Christian Approach to Church History,” talk recorded 28 February 1984, Library of the Presbyterian Theological College, Melbourne. Ibid. wsr to Stewart Gill, 31 November [30 Nov. or 1 Dec.?], 1984, courtesy of Stewart Gill.

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Notes to pages 293–301

59 wsr to Stewart Gill, 29 December 1984, courtesy of Stewart Gill. 60 wsr to Stewart Gill, 2 March 1985, courtesy of Stewart Gill. 61 wsr to Dr Orme, Anne and David Innes, 21 June 1965 [1985], wsrff, pcc Archives. 62 wsr to Stewart Gill, 22 March 1986, courtesy of Stewart Gill. 63 wsr to Stewart Gill, 7 March 1987, courtesy of Stewart Gill. 64 wsr to Stewart Gill, 17 November 1985, courtesy of Stewart Gill. 65 wsr to Stewart Gill, 21 April 1990, courtesy of Stewart Gill. 66 wsr to Stewart Gill, 20 June 1992, courtesy of Stewart Gill.

chapter seventeen 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Reid, “Loneliness and the Christian,” 16. wsr to Stewart Gill, 7 April 1984, courtesy of Stewart Gill. wsr to Stewart Gill, 4 February 1985, courtesy of Stewart Gill. wsr to Stewart Gill, 2 March 1985, courtesy of Stewart Gill. wsr to Stewart Gill, 23 March 1985, courtesy of Stewart Gill. wsr to Stewart Gill, 1 December 1990, courtesy of Stewart Gill. wsr to Stewart Gill, 1 December 1990, courtesy of Stewart Gill. wsr to Graham Lyman, 9 November 1991, courtesy of Graham Lyman. wsr to Stewart Gill, 19 November 1992, courtesy of Stewart Gill. Ronald Sunter to Stewart Gill, 4 January 1994, courtesy of Stewart Gill. Darch used the New International Version as the translation of choice at St Andrew’s.

epilogue 1 Will of the late Priscilla Lee Reid as provided to the author by the Trust. 2 Guelph Daily Mercury, 30 December 1996. 3 Elizabeth Ewan, “William Stanford Reid (1913–1996),” Sixteenth Century Journal 28, no. 2 (1997): 511–12.

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– Skipper from Leith, The History of Robert Barton of Over Barnton. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962. – “Whither the Presbyterian Church in Canada?” in W.S.Reid, ed., “In The Unity of Faith”: Some comments on the position of Presbyterian Church in Canada in the modern Ecumenical Movement. Privately published. Rian, Edwin H. The Presbyterian Conflict. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1940. Ross, J. M. E. William Ross of Cowcaddens. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1905. Ross, Kenneth R. Church and Creed in Scotland: The Free Church Case 1900–1904 and Its Origins. Edinburgh: Rutherford House Books, 1988. Sawatsky, R.G. ‘Looking for that Blessed Hope’: The Roots of Fundamentalism in Canada, 1878–1914. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1986. Shepherd, Norman. The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation and Evangelism. Phillipsburg, nj: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2000. – “The Covenant Context for Evangelism” John H. Skilton, ed. The New Testament Student and Theology, volume 3 of The New Testament Student. Phillipsburg, nj: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976. – “Justification by Faith Alone,” Reformation and Revival Journal 11, no. 2, Spring 2002, 75–90. – “Scripture and Confession” Scripture and Confession: A Book About Confessions Old and New, by John H. Skilton. Phillipsburg, nj: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1973. Showalter, Nathan. The End of a Crusade: The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions and the Great War. Latham, md: The Scarecrow Press, 1998. Silva, Moses. “A Half Century of Reformed Scholarship.” Westminster Theological Journal 50, no. 2 (Fall 1988). Simpson, P. Carnegie. The Life of Principal Rainy. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1909. Sloan, Douglas. Faith and Knowledge: Mainline Protestantism and American Higher Education; Louisville, ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994. Stackhouse, John G. Canadian Evangelicalism in the Twentieth Century: An Introduction to Its Character. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Stonehouse, Ned. J. Gresham Machen: Valiant For Truth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954. Trotter, R.G. “Aims in the Study and Teaching of History in Canadian Universities Today.” Annual Reports of the Canadian Historical Association 24 (1943): 50–62. Van Ginkel, Aileen. “Assimilation, Transformation, or Opposition?” in The Canadian Society of Presbyterian History Papers, 1984–1985: 42–58. Van Til, Cornelius. The New Modernism. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1946. Vissers, John A. “Recovering the Reformation Conception of Revelation: The Theological Contribution of Walter Williamson Bryden to Post-Union

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Biographical entries in the notes are in boldface. Abbott, Lew, 189, 191 Adair, E.R., 41–2, 43, 115–17 Adrian, Victor, 229 Aicken, Thomas, 225, 368n26 Alexander, Archibald, 63 Allis, Oswald, 178 American Association of Theological Schools, 234 American Society of Church History, 212 Appleton, E., 140 Argyll, Duke of, 165 Armstrong, H.S., 215 Articles of Faith Committee, pcc, 96 asbestos strike, 1949, 84 atonement, substitutionary, 16 Auburn Affirmation, 224 Avoca, qc, 17 Bainton, Roland, 210 Bannatyne v. Overtoun, 331n14 Barnhouse, D.G., 132, 221 Barr, Robert, 129, 350n12 Barth, Karl, 61, 93, 94, 96–7 Baxter, J.H., 68, 358n8 Bayley, C.C., 118–19, 182, 186 Bean, Everett, 223, 236, 271, 367n18 Beare, F.W., 54. 94–5, 335n14, 343n8 Bell, C.R., 106, 147, 149–50, 153, 346n39 Bell, L.Nelson, 137

Berkouwer, G.C., 138, 251 Bevan-Jones, Violet Stanford, aunt of WSR, 27 Bible Presbyterian Church, 62; in Edmonton, 96 Biblical inspiration, 16, 139, 221–2 Bindoff, Norman, 187 Bishop, Russell, 209 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 259 Book of Common Order, 157–9 Bottomley, Evan, 226, 369n33 Bouchard, T-D, 83 Bouma, Clarence, 241 Bradshaw, 281, 288 Brebner, J.H., 117 Bridlewood Church, Toronto, 220, 235 Brown, Michael, 189–90 Bryden, W.W., 92–3, 95, 99, 143, 228 Buchanan, John 189 Calvin, John (1509–1564): quatrocentenary of his death, 239–40; and capitalism, 240; and ecumenicity, 241; and justification by faith, 241–2; humour of, 242; and revival, 242; not final word, 242–3; theory of Puritan modification of his theology, 243–4; and missions, 291–2 Calvin Church (crc), Ottawa, 251 Calvin Theological Seminary, 247

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Camberwell Church, Melbourne, 285 Cambridge Intercollegiate Christian Union, 50 Cameron, A.deM., 94–5 Cameron W.A., 142 Campbell, Donald, 159, 237, 357n44 Campbell, John, 21 Campbell, John J.T., 282 Campbell, Malcolm, 6–7, 325n8 Campbell, Wm, 220 Careless, J.M.S., 181 Carruthers, S.J.M., 43 Century and a Half of Witness, 218 Chalmers, Humphrey, 30, 329n41 China Inland Mission, 51, 52, 100 China Presbyterian Church, 100 Christianity Today, 137–9 Christian Reformed Church, 246 Church of Christ in China, 100–3 Church of St Andrew and St Paul, Montreal, 49, 146, 233 Church of Scotland in Lower Canada, 43 Church Union, 36–9 ckvl (radio station), 88 Clark, Gordon, 177, 257, 360n45 Clowney, Edmund, 261, 266, 268, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277 Cochrane, A., 96–7, 99, 343n15 Codling, Donald, 226, 368n31 Codling, Douglas, 226, 368n29 Codling, James, 226, 368n30 Collard, A.E., 171 Collins, G.N.M., 252–3, 373n59 Conn, Harvie, 267 Connor, Ralph. See Gordon, C.W. conscription plebiscite, 81–2 Cooke’s Church, Toronto, 33, 136 Cooper, John, 119, 176 Copeland, Bruce, 160 Côte St Gabriel, qc, 63, 66 Côte St George, qc, 63 Coussirat, Daniel, 20 Covenant College, 208 Crowley, Terry, 186, 216 Crystal Falls, qc, 51 Cummings, C.K., 58, 259, 271, 278 Cummings, David, 259 Currie, Arthur, 40, 51 Dangerink, Jan, 255, 373n61, 374n70 Darby, John Nelson, 25, 52, 132, 328n28

Davidson, A.B., 21 Davies, Raymond, 196 Davis, Kenneth, 190–1 Davis, Tom, 204 Dawson, Bell, 50 Dawson, J.Wm, 6,, 32–3, 34, 326n7 DeGraaf, Arnold, 249 DeGroot, Louis, 220, 221, 367n13 Detlor, Lyall, 40, 50, 51, 111, 144 Denney, James, 22 Deutsch Commission, 183 deWaal, Alex, 162–3 Dickson, James, 102, 161, 357n46 DiGangi, Mariano: with WD, 67; assistant editor, Reformation Today, 142; leaves Montreal for Hamilton, 144; minister of Mary Rogers, 188; returns from Philadelphia, 220; and Presbyterian Comment 221; and WSR’s proposed new seminary in Canada, 230; WSR expresses concern to, 237; preaches at WSR’s funeral, 297–8, 353n10 dispensational premillenialism, 350n14 Dods, Marcus, 21 Dooyeweerd, Herman, 244–6, 372n38 Dow, D.R., 165 Drysdale, Wm, 17 Duplessis, Maurice, 70, 82, 140 Eakin, Thomas, 54 Eccles, W.J., 43 Economic History of Great Britain, 127–8 Elder, Kingsley, 278 Elton, G.R., 210–11 Ephraim Scott Church, Montreal, 135, 144 Evangelical Christian, 102 Evans, Dilwyn, 161–62, 357n49 Evans, Margaret, 186, 213, 216 Ewan, Elizabeth, 301 Fairmount Church, Montreal, 72 Fairmount-Taylor Church, Montreal, 73, 85 Fairview Church, Vancouver, 226 Faith Seminary, 62 Farrell, David, 189 Farris, Allan (1920–1977): chair of committee on church worship, pcc, 157; invites WSR to Knox College, 208;

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Index expresses appreciation to WSR, 209; reviews Trumpeter of God 213; WSR replaces following sudden death of, 226; death affects pcc, 228; longtime friends leave pcc, 226; expresses misgivings about Knox College amalgamation, 228; and WSR, 231–33; succeeded as Knox College principal by Charles Hay, 234; speaks for Association for Reformed Scientific studies at Unionville, 248 Ferguson, Sinclair, 261 Fieldhouse, H.N., 117–18 Fitch, Wm, 129, 222, 230 Fitzmeier, John, 244 Forrester, Maureen, 85, 341n11 Fowler, Kathleen, 186 Fraser, Daniel, 53–4 Fraser, David, 257, 374n1 Free Church of Scotland, 37, 82, 89, 219, 287 Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 59, 337n36 Free University of Amsterdam, 239, 249, 253, 265, 368n31, 372n27 Fryer, C.E., 44–6, 64, 118, 333n45 Gaffin, Richard, 262, 266, 268 General Assembly, pcc: 1911: 36; 1923, 36; 1925, 38, 132; 1935, 75; 1940, 74; 1943, 99; 1945, 100; 1946, 104–5; 1947, 105, 108; 1948, 106–7, 246; 1949, 110; 1950, 111; 1955, 151–2; 1956, 152; 1958, 147; 1959, 149; 1960, 149–50, 153, 354n24; 1962, 153; 1963, 154; 964, 154; 1965, 154; 1966, 218, 220; 1967, 222; 1969, 219, 223, 228; 1969, 228; 1970, 224;1971, 219; 1974, 219; 1978, 233; 1980, 235; 1982, 335n32 Gerstner, J., 138 Gill, Stewart, 293 Gillson, A.H., 99, 344n24 Glen, J.S., 94, 154, 228–9 Glover, R.H., 51, 534n8 Godfrey, Robert, 263, 264, 266, 269 Goforth, J., 100–1 Gordon, C.W. (pseud. Ralph Connor), 36, 331n13 Gordon College/Divinity School, Boston, [later Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary]: WSR addresses convocation

395

at, 175; WSR’s graduate student from, 189–90; WSR delivers Staley lectures at, 209; Professor Meredith Kline, 266; Professor Roger Nicole, 269; Professor David Kerr, 353n2 Gowans, D.K., 156–7, 220, 340n25 Grace Church, Calgary, 247 Graham, Billy, 137, 138, 221 Graham, Donald, 272, 274 Greaves, Richard, 211 Grier, W.S., 49 Guinness, Howard, 50 Hardy, C.A., 72, 339n16 Harman, Allan, 283, 287, 289, 294 Hare, Ken, 182 Harnack, Adolf, 22 Harrington, qc, 17 Harrison, Hector, 283–4 Harrison, Wm, 138 Hart, H., 249 Hawkes, Everett, 220, 368n31 Hawthorn Church, Melbourne, 281, 381n38 Hay, Charles, 153, 233, 234 Hay, David, 157, 232, 234, 241, 356n40, 370n47 Henderson, Lloyd, 147 Hendricksen, Wm, 269–70 Henry, Carl, 57, 137 Hill, Arthur, 52 Hillian, Lorna Raper, 205 Hodge, Charles, 45, 265, 337n45 Holmes, Arthur F., 208 Holy Spirit: distinctive of MacVicar and WD, 16; and revival, 19; WSR exemplifying fits of in his teaching, 135; WSR preaches on, 137; Calvin and, 241; PLR vs Shepherd on, 241; in history of church, 290; encouragement of in old age, 295; WSR writes on, 326n9 Hooker, Kenneth, 50, 53 Howell, B.E., 150, 231, 353n25 Howland, A.C., 70, 339n10 Hughes, John, 99 Hughes, Philip (1915–1990): columnist Christianity Today, 138; speaks at WTS, 227; first meeting with WSR, 232; and International Reformed Bulletin, 233; contributor to John Calvin, 243; and Norman Shepherd, 264–5,

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269, 275, 375nn23, 28; no longer at WTS, 278; festschrift, 296. Independent Board, 62 Inglis, John, 230, 231, 350n13 Inkster, J, 132, 350nn12, 14, 351n16 Innes, David, 289, 293 Innes, Frank, 289 Innes, T.C., 350n12 International Association for Reformed Faith and Action (iarfa), 252–55 International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (ifes), 53 International Reformed Bulletin, 255 ivcv: founding of in Canada, 50; third (1931) conference, 51; fifth (1933) conference, 52; enters US, 59; WSR and McGill vcf, 58, cf with UofT vcf, 349n7; Guelph vcf, 205 James, F. Cyril (1903–1973): appointed McGill Principal, 76–7; WSR advocates, 74–5; in favour of joint divinity faculty, 98–9; Reid confides in, 130, 134; negotiates with Presbyterian College, 152; 344n25; hosts congress of Universities of the Commonwealth, 164–5; sacked by Powell, 170–1, 174; thanked by WSR in his writing, 127, 173; referee for WSR, 182 Jesus Christ: substitutionary atonement of, 16; second coming of, 16, 26; Christology of scm, 49–50; WSR preaches on, 64; calling of, 112; challenge of, 122; loss of, 122; celebrating birth of, 143; task of church to hold forth, 151; John Knox and, 207; and Calvin’s ecumenicity, 241; and Dooyeweerd, 245; “King and Lord,” 253; Shepherd’s theses on, 266; confessing as Son of God, 286; rule of, 289 John Calvin: His Influence, 239, 243 Johnson, E.H. (1909–1981): as student, 40; theological studies in US, 54; missionary, 101; moves to US, 106–7; uncle Hewlett, 108; examines theological education with WSR, 154; and Presbyterian Comment, 157, 159; visits to mission fields, 160–2; conflict over finances, 162; Biafra, 162–3, 357n53 Johnston, Deane, 153, 218, 354n22

Jones, W.J., 58, 336n31 Justification by faith: WSR first encounters, 48; WSR preaches on, 67; basic Reformation doctrine, 142; John Calvin on, 241–2; contemporary debate over, 258; Shepherd on, 259–61, 262–3, 265, 266, 267, 269–70, 277 Kendall, R.T., 243 Kennedy, D. James, 259 Kerr, D.W., 142, 143, 353n2 Keswick, England, 29–30 Ketchum, Jesse, 131, 369n46 Kik, J.M. (“Jake”): edits Bible Christianity, 75, 155; allied with WSR in Montreal Presbytery; 79; not opposed to “Biblical ecumenicity,” 97; attacked in Montreal Star, 100; cosigns overture with WSR, 103–4; nominates WSR as pc professor, 110; returns to US, 111; associate editor, Christianity Today, 137; disillusionment with pcc, 144; recommended to WTS board by WSR, 177, 340n26 Kilpatrick, T.B., 23 King, Mackenzie, 70 Kinnaird, John, 270, 377n51 Klassen, Walter, 191 Klempa, Wm, 233 Klinck, Bill, 52, 335n22 Knowland, Wm, 138 Knox, John (c1514–1572): WSR defends, 5; context for provided by WSR Ph.D. thesis, 70; and quatrocentenery of Scottish Reformation, 151; and Scottish Studies colloquium, 194; WSR as biographer of, 202–4, 209–11; 400th anniversary of death of, 209–11 Knox Church, Dundas, 236; Guelph, 186; St Catharines, 205; Toronto, 128–34, 230–1; Waterloo, 205 Knox College, Toronto, 228, 230 Knox Crescent and Kensington Church, Montreal, 146 Knox’s Galt Church, Cambridge, 220 Knudsen, R., 273 Kromminga, John, 209 Kuiper, R.B., 56, 178–9, 327n12 Kuschke, Arthur, 263, 273. 274 Kuyper, Abraham, 239, 245, 246

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Index Laird, John, 128, 130 LaMonte, J.L., 70, 339n11 Lawson, Wm, 154 Lea, H.C., 68, 70 League of Evangelical Students, 58 Lee, Archibald, 72, 339n16 Lee, Henry S., 71–2, 233–4 Lee, H.E.W., 72, 140–1 Lennox, R., 54, 108–10, 153 Lesage, Jean, 173 Lindsell, Harold, 139 Living Faith, 237–8 Lloyd-Jones, D.M., 269 Lost River, qc, 51 Lowe, George, 222 Lunt, W.E., 70, 339n13 Lyman, Graham, 289 MacDougall, Daniel Jr, 234–5 MacGregor, Geddes, 203–4 Machen, J. Gresham (1881–1937): as historian, 5; friend of W.D., 35; WSR’s impressions of, 53–4; death of, 62; not a Biblical literalist, 222, 331n8 MacInnis, Angus, mp, 83 MacKenzie, F.S., 53, 99, 103, 105, 106, 345n28 MacKinnon, Murdo, 179, 181, 183, 184, 188, 197, 199 MacLachlan, J.D., 184, 197, 362n9 Maclean, J.B., 45 Maclennan, R.D., 99 MacLeod, Alexander, 160–1, 357n48 MacLeod, Donald, 220, 230, 237, 369n45 MacLeod, John, 13 MacMillan, Hugh, 160 MacNamara, J.W., 281 MacRae, A.R., 196 MacRae, Allan, 62, 178 MacRae, Lachlan, 196 MacVicar, Donald Harvey, 14, 16, 20 Manion, R., 70 Manning, Ernest, 138 Manson, Judge, 147 Marsden, George, 243 Martin Luther, 145 Masters, Donald, 142, 187–8 Mathews, Norman L., 230–31 McBride, J.S., 135, 218, 351n23 McCafferty, Samuel, 281

397

McComb, J.H., 132 McCord, James I., 209 McDowell, Quincy, 144, 353n9 McEwen, Thomas, 183 McGill, James, 6, 171, 325n6 McIntire, Carl, 59, 96 McIntire, C. Thomas, 148–9 McKechnie, Charles, 232 McKinlay, Ed, 236 McLelland, Joseph, 153, 221, 234 McNeill, John, 21, 33, 35, 330n6 McPhee, Howard, 225 McPherson, A., 130, 131, 134 McQueen, D.G., 30 McRoberts, Wm, 111 Memmelaar, Joseph, 268 Mille Isles, qc, 63, 66–7 Mille Îles seigneury, 88–9 millenialism, 25–6 Miller, C.John, 259 Miller, Robert S., 287 Milne, Douglas, 288 Mitchell, John, 263 Moffat, Mel, 220 Moll, A.E., 26 Moll, Eva, 27 Moll, Rose Stanford, aunt of WSR, 26, 329n32 Moll, Tom, 26 Morley, Frank, 76 Morrin College, Quebec, 14 Munford, Clarence, 188 Murray, A.A., 104–5, 107–8 Murray, Andrew, 328n19 Murray, David, 188, 189, 190, 195 Murray, John (1898–1975): attitude toward ‘separated life,’ 57; and WSR, 59–60; connection with Bloor St. Free Presbyterian Church, Toronto, 95; one of aging original wts faculty, 197; and Norman Shepherd, 258–59; WSR whiffs legalism in, 261 Nasik, India, 27, 28 Neatby, Hilda, 152, 353n29 Nederhood, Joel, 267–8 Nesbitt, A.J., 49 New, John, 191 Nicholson, Ranald, 188, 191 Nicole, Roger, 269 Nicolson, Murdo, 219 Nicoll, Cathie, 53, 335n22

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Ockenga, H.J., 137 Olthuis, James, 249 Ontario Bible College/Theological Seminary, 209. 230, 267 ordo salutis, 66–7 Orr, James, 22 Orthodox Presbyterian Church, 62, 92, 106, 177, 271, 360n45, 361n56 Owen, J.G., 231, 243 Padlock Law (1937), 82 Pappas, T., 268 Parker, Stewart, 54 Parsons, Henry Martyn, 16, 132, 326n11 Pater, Calvin, 233 Pew, J.H., 137, 138 Pidgeon, George Leslie, 19–20, 37, 185 Pidgeon, Helen Ball, 19 Pidgeon, Leslie, 19–20, 37 Plumb, J. H., 200–1, 363n49 Powell, R.E., 170, 171, 174 Presbyterian Church in America, 226, 273–5, 368nn29, 30, 31, 369n33 Presbyterian College, Montreal: Principal MacVicar and W.D. at, 14–15; Journal of, 15; original faculty of, 20–1; WD teaches at, 34; awarded doctorate at, 34; theological changes at, 53–4; loses key students to US, 54, 109; Priscilla Lee Reid librarian at, 71; WD criticises, 75; WSR fights amalgamation of, 98–100; change of principals, 106; returns from Toronto, 108; WSR on board of, 110; WSR chairs academic appointments committee of, 108; WSR nominated professor at, 110–12; relocation of, 151–3; resignations at, 153; amalgamates with McGill, 228; Ritchie Bell interim principal at, 346n39; WSR receives honourary dd from, 233–4 Presbyterian Comment, 155–7, 220 Presbyterian Guardian, 92, 96, 97–8 Presbyterian Men, 155 Presbyterian Theological Hall, Melbourne, 283, 287–90 Presbytery of Montreal, pcc, 48, 86, 100; ucc, 48 Pryce, Trevor, 281 Putnam, Max, 283, 380n16 Quebec: Protestant identity of, 47–8; WSR always a Quebecker, 79–80, 179

Quiet Revolution. See révolution tranquille Ransom, Malcolm, 40, 54, 101–2 Rayner, DeCourcy, 155, 356n37 Read, Conyers, 70, 339n12 Reformation Fellowship of Canadian Presbyterians, 236 Reformed Ecumenical Synod (res), 239, 251–6 Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 208 Reformed Theological Seminary, Geelong, Australia, 287 Regent College, 206 Reid, Allan, 38, 39, 99, 233, 331n20, 332n25 Reid, Andrew, uncle of WSR: as son, 13; with WD at pc, 20; chaplain and minister, 34; friend of C.W. Gordon, 36, 331n13; of the Pidgeons, 37; at 1925 ga, 38; at Sault Ste Marie, 329n30 Reid, Daisy Stanford, mother of WSR: childhood of, 24–5; applies to mission, 27; India experience, 27; trip to Canada, 28–9; wedding, 29; death, 63 Reid, E.A. Stewart, brother of WSR: 31, 33, 67, 85, 112, 174 Reid, Janet Dunn, grandmother of WSR, 11–12 Reid, Joseph, grandfather of WSR, 11–13, 53 Reid, Priscilla Lee, wife of WSR: early years, 71; business savvy, 72–3; conference hostess, 164–65, 173–4, 358n3; historic preservationist, 167–70, 192–3; citation by city of Montreal, 170; cooperates in WSR’s writing, 71, 173; active in wms, 205, 218; appreciation by faculty, 216; reaction to Norman Shepherd, 262; health concerns, 284–5, 287, 292; comments on WSR lecture preparation, 288; interest in women in Australian church 291; diagnosed with Parkinson’s, 296; death of, 298; sets up trust with WSR, 299–300 Reid, Wm Dunn, father of WSR: in youth, 12–13; professing faith, 13–14; theological student, 14–15; confessionalist, 15; eschatology, 16; preacher, 17; pastoral visitor, 17–18, 332n26; ordination, 19; travels to uk, 21–2, to

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Index Palestine, 22; Harvard student, 22; called to Taylor Church, 22; Kootenay evangelist, 23 328n21; Alberta Mission Superintendent, 23–4; meets Daisy Stanford, 24; wedding, 29–30; marriage, 30; refuses to wear clerical collar, 344n21; denied call to Knox Church, 132; death of, 112–13 Reid, W. Stanford: as preacher, 17–18, 63–5, 85, 136; impact of church union on, 39; at Westmount High School, 39–40; as McGill undergraduate, 40–3; as writer, 41, 69; president of Historical Club, 44; receives ma, 45; religious conversion, 48; president McGill Evangelical Union, 51; enters wts, 55; break with ‘pietism’, 56–7; graduation from wts, 63; doctoral research, 68–70; on justification, 48, 67, 260–1, 262; courtship and marriage, 71, 73–4; applies to pcc, 74, 76; ordination, 79; begins lecturing at McGill, 79; and freedom of conscience, 82–3; as social activist, 84; pastoral visitor, 85, 341n10; visits recruiting office, 85; starts services in tmr, 86; vision for a different church, 87–8; as pastor, 87, radio broadcaster, 88; summer research in Europe, 89; appointed McGill assistant professor, 90; seeks coalition with Barthians, 96–7; on ecumenicity, 97, 246; anticlericalism, 98; opposes joint McGill Faculty of Divinity, 98–100; China mission cooperation, 100–7; denied appointment to pc, 108–11; vocational decision, 111–12, 141; university marshal, 114; chief invigilator, 114; director of residences, 115; graduate students of, 120; McGill courses taught, 120–1; as Christian apologist, 121; reflects on university’s social task, 121–2; sense of humour, 126–7, 234; turned down by Knox Church Toronto, 134; as lay instructor, 135; in Bermuda, 136–7; and Biblical inerrancy, 139, 221–2; seeking new challenge, 140; view of Christmas, 143; chair, Evangelism and Social Action, Montreal Presbytery, 144–5; chair, Church Extension, Montreal Presbytery, 145–7; secretary, committee streamlin-

399 ing pcc administration, 147–50; celebrates quatrocentenary of Scottish Reformation, 151; facilitates negotiations between Presbyterian College and McGill, 153; chairs Committee on Structure of Theological Education, 153–5; visits Jamaica for Presbyterian Men, 155; edits Presbyterian Comment, 155–7, 220; commissioner to 13 General Assemblies, 355n34; made fellow of Royal Society of Arts, 166; buys a junk, 166–7; becomes director of new university residences, 171–2; promoted to full professor, 176; approached to be first president of wts, 176–9; moves to University of Guelph, 179–80, 181–2; frequent subsequent moves, 182; organizing Guelph history department, 183–7; attracts graduate students, 189–91; local history enthusiast, 191–2; sets up Guelph Scottish Studies department and colloquia, 193–5 ; establishes Guelph library as Scottish research center, 195–7; identifies with students in debate over power in the university, 197–8; and John Knox, 202; Knox’s quatrocentenary 206–8; as Staley lecturer, 208–9; Trumpeter of God, 209–11; health concerns, 211; purchase of Ewen-Grahame Papers, 211; honourary doctorates, 212, 233–4; friction in department, 213–15; retirement recognitions at Guelph, 215–16; and ordination of women, 218, 235, 366n3, 302; active in local church, 218; nominated Moderator of 1974 General Assembly, 218, 366n6; and draft Statement of Faith, 220–2; new ordination questions 223–4; counsels pcc separatists, 226–8; sabbatical at wts, 227, 260; seeks Reformed and Canadian seminary, 229–30; doctorate from Presbyterian College, 233; starts Reformation Fellowship of Canadian Presbyterians, 236; assesses Living Faith, 237; as interpreter of John Calvin, 239–43; leadership in iarfa and res, 251–5; sees reinterpretation of justification as slippery slope, 263, 272; reacts to Norman Shepherd, 261–2, 264, teaches at ots winterim,

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267; urges Reformed Seminary in Canada, 267; writes to opc Presbytery of Philadelphia, 271; 4 May 1981 letter, 272–3, 277; leaves wts Board, 278; 1980 trip to Pacific rim, 284–7; teaches at Presbyterian Theological Hall, Melbourne, 287–90; preoccupation with Priscilla’s health, 294, 295–6; old age and loneliness, 295; diagnosed with cancer, 296–7; funeral of, 297–8; sets up a trust, 299–300; assessment of, 300–2 Reid, Wm, great-grandfather of WSR, 10–11 Rennie, Ian, 233 Rentoul, J.L., 281 Reside, Merrill, 220 Revival, 18–19 révolution tranquille, 173, 176 Rice, John R., 137 Richardson, George, 231 Ridley, Jasper, 203, 211 Ritchie, Ronald, 198 Ritschl, Albrecht, 22 Robarts, John, 184 Robert Wesleyan College, 208 Roberts, Dorothy, 163 Robertson, Palmer, 266, 268, 269 Robertson, Rocke, 174–5 Robinson, Earl, 56–7, 67, 358n7 Rockwood, Perry, 104, 345n35 Rogers, Mary, 188 Roslyn School, 33, 36 Ross, James, 327n14 Ross, Wm, 22, 327n18, 327n19 Rowat, D.M., 99 Runner, Evan, 244–6, 247–8, 250, 372n27 Ryskamp, Kenneth, 268, 270 St Andrew’s Church, Guelph, 204–5, 297; Ottawa, 151, 354n24; Toronto, 54, 218; Windsor, 154 St Andrew’s Fort William Church, Thunder Bay, 151 St Columba-by-the-Lake Church, Valois, qc, 145 St Enoch Church, Hamilton, 220, 367n23 St Giles Church, Baie d’Urfé, qc, 146, 354n15 Salmon, Charles, 220

Sangster, W.E., 138 Schrotenboer, Paul, 251, 255, 258, 373n53 Scottish Tradition in Canada, 213, 365n44 Scrimger, John, 20 Seerveld, C., 249 ‘separated life,’ 62–3 Settle, Paul, 188, 268, 269, 275 Setton, Kenneth, 182 Shelley, C.W., 30, 329n42 Shepherd, Norman: academic career, 258–59; reaction to ‘cheapened grace,’ 259; initial concern over his formulation of justification by faith, 259–60; his “Relation of Good Works to Justification,” 260; WSR’s reaction, 260–1; views on baptism, 261; personality, 261–2; faculty exonerates, 262; WSR responds in “Faith and Justification,” 262; opc Philadelphia Presbytery examines, 263–4, 271; his “Further Response,” 264; President Clowney’s assessments of, 265, 268, 274–5, 276; “Thirty-four Theses,” 265–7; Committee of Five investigates, 268–70; Trustees caution, 272; 4 May 1981 letter about, 272–4; affects three-way denominational merger discussions, 275–6; dismissal from wts faculty, 277; press release, 277; blame attached to WSR, 277–9; subsequent career, 379n81 Shields, T.T., 21, 35, 83–4, 137, 330n7 Short, Ben, 225, 367n23 Sinclair, Gordon, 210 Skipper From Leith, 172–3 Smart, James, 99, 344n26 Smith, Goldwin, 202, 203, 211 Stanford, Reuben, grandfather of WSR, 24–5, 30, 36, 53, 329n40 Stanley [St.] Church, Montreal: “proudly Presbyterian,” 4; W.D. attends while student, 17; history of, 32–3; pulpit guests at, 35, 330n6; effect of church union on, 38; WSR joins, 47; youth worker for, 48; Frank Morley succeeds WD at, 76; funerals from: Daisy Reid, 65, WD, 112–13; elder from supports WSR, 99; resemblance to Hawthorn Church, Melbourne, 283 Stevenson, J. Ross, 176, 177

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Index Stevenson, R.L., 41 Stewart, A.J. (“Archie”), 102, 129, 349n7 Stewart, A.J.M., 26 Straka, Stefan, 188 Strimple, Robert, 222, 263, 266 Stuart, Douglas, Earl of Moray, 165–6 Student Christian Movement, 49–50 Sutherland, H.W., 336n24, 349n7 Swanton, Robert, 283, 381n38 Taylor, Aiken, 277 Taylor, Geraldine Guinness, 50 Terpstra, Gerard, 243 Thomas, Bob, 284, 290 Thompson, M. F., 267 tmr Presbyterian Church, 86–7, 90–1 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 165, 358n4 Trewin, R., 102 Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 229, 269 Trudeau, P.E., 84, 341n8 Trumpeter of God, 209–11 Universities of the Commonwealth, 122 Vanden Heuvel, Thomas, 268 van Prinsterer, Groen, 245 372n32 Van Til, Cornelius (“K.C.”) (1895–1987): influence on WSR, 60–2, 239, 245, 247, 250; view of Barth, 93, 107; and WSR’s course History 410, 124; and Gordon Clark, 177, 360nn45, 46; interviews WSR for wts presidency, 179; his Calvinism, 239; influence on Runner, 244; and Dooyeweerd, 245; support for Norman Shepherd, 265, 270, 375n22. Viger Commission, 169, 359n23 Vollenhoven, Theodoor, 248 Walker, Blake, 230, 231 Walker, Paul, 226, 369n34 Watson, Patrick, 197 Waugh, W.T., 42–3; 118, 333n34, 333nn35, 36, 38 Weber, Max, 240 Wesley, John, 48

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Westminster Chapel, London, 243, 253 Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia: impact on WSR, 5, 46, 257; reasons for choice of by WSR, 53–5; in downtown Philadelphia, 56–7; move to Glenside, 57; and adiaphora, 56–7; and the League, 58–9; faculty of, 59–63; WSR’s assessment of his education there, 63; faculty splits, 95; wts students discriminated against by pcc, 105, 234; change of governance, 176–7; publishes Journal, 177; WSR proposed as President of, 178–79; WSR and doctoral program of, 213; ecclesiology of, 224–5; Semper Reformanda at, 227; WSR fears end of, 262, 272; difficulties at publicised on 4 May 1981 by WSR et al, 272–4; terminates Norman Shepherd, 276–8; WSR leaves board of, 278 Wevers, John, 154 Wheaton College, 208, 212–23 Whitley, Elizabeth, 203 Wilkinson, Bertie, 181, 182 Williams, Basil, 41 Willowdale Church, Toronto, 220, 37 Wilson, Minnie/May Stanford, aunt of WSR, 26–7 Wilson, Robert, 189–90, Winchester, A.B., 132, 350n12 Winegard, Wm C., 197, 198, 363n40 Woods, C.S., 52, 53, 58, 334n10, 349n7 Woods, H.D., 181 Woolley, Paul (1902–1984): secretary League of Evangelical Students, 58; registrar wts, 58; and WSR, 60; advises about Knox Church, 130; sides with Norman Shepherd, 265 Wright, Ned, 24 Wright, N. Thomas, 258, 374n3 Younger, Wm, 220 Zagorin, Perez, 119–20, 176 Zenana Bible and Medical Mission, 27–8 Zouche, Lord, 24–5 Zylstra, B., 249

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