THE CLERGY RESERVES.
I have lately astonished some of my friends with the information, that
William Lyon Mackenzie was originally an advocate of the Clergy
Reserves--that is, of state endowment for religious purposes--a fact
which makes his fatal plunge into treason the more to be regretted by
all who coincide with him on the religious question.
In Lindsey's "Memoirs" we read (vol. 1, p. 46):
"A Calvinist in religion, proclaiming his belief in the
Westminster Confession of Faith, and a Liberal in politics, yet
was Mr. Mackenzie, at that time, no advocate of the voluntary
principle. On the contrary, he lauded the British Government for
making a landed endowment for the Protestant clergy in the
Provinces, and was shocked at the report that, in 1812,
voluntaryism had robbed three millions of people of all means of
religious ordinances. 'In no part of the constitution of the
Canadas,' he said, 'is the wisdom of the British Legislature
more apparent than in its setting apart a portion of the
country, while yet it remained a wilderness, for the support of
religion.'
. . . "Mr. Mackenzie compared the setting apart of one-seventh
of the public lands for religious purposes to a like dedication
in the time of the [early] Christians. But he objected that the
revenues were monopolized by one church, to which only a
fraction of the population belonged. The envy of the
non-recipient denominations made the favoured Church of England
unpopular.
. . . "Where the majority of the present generation of Canadians
will differ from him, is that on the Clergy Reserves question,
he did not hold the voluntary view. At that time, he would have
denounced secularization as a monstrous piece of sacrilege."[15]
How much to be regretted is it, that instead of splitting up the Clergy
Reserves into fragments, the friends of religious education had not
joined their forces for the purpose of endowing all Christian
denominations with the like means of usefulness. We are now extending
across the entire continent what I cannot help regarding as the
anti-Christian practice of non-religious popular education. We are, I
believe, but smoothing the road to crime in the majority of cases.
Cannot something be done now, while yet the lands of the vast North-West
are at our disposal? Will no courageous legislator raise his voice to
advocate the dedication of a few hundred thousand acres to unselfish
purposes? Have we wiled away the Indian prairies from their aboriginal
owners, to make them little better than a race-course for speculating
gamblers?
Even if the jealousy of rival politicians--each bent upon
self-aggrandizement at the expense of more honourable aims--should
defeat all efforts in behalf of religious endowments through the
Dominion Legislature, cannot the religious associations amongst us
bestir themselves in time? Cannot the necessity for actual settlement be
waived in favour of donations by individuals for Church uses? Cannot the
powerful Pacific Railway Syndicate themselves take up this great duty,
of setting apart certain sections in favour of a Christian ministry?
The signs of the times are dark--dark and fearful. In Europe, by the
confession of many eminent public writers, heathenism is overspreading
the land. In the United States, a community of the sexes is shamelessly
advocated; and there is no single safeguard of public or private order
and morality, that is not openly scoffed at and set at nought.
Oh, men! men! preachers, and dogmatists, and hierarchs of all sects! see
ye not that your strifes and your jealousies are making ye as traitors
in the camp, in the face of the common enemy? See ye not the multitudes
approaching, armed with the fell weapons of secular knowledge--cynicism,
self-esteem, greed, envy, ambition, ill-regulated passions unrestrained!
One symptom of a nobler spirit has shown itself in England, in the
understanding lately suggested, or arrived at, that the missions of any
one Protestant Church in the South Sea Islands shall be entirely
undisturbed by rival missionaries. This is right; and if right in
Polynesia, why not in Great Britain? why not in Canada? Why cultivate
half-a-dozen contentious creeds in every new township or village? Would
it not be more amiable, more humble, more self-denying, more
exemplary--in one word, more like our Master and Saviour--if each
Christian teacher were required to respect the ministrations of his next
neighbour, even though there might be some faint shade of variety in
their theological opinions; provided always that those ministrations
were accredited by some duly constituted branch of the Christian Church.
I profess that I can see no reason why an endowment should not be
provided in every county in the North-West, to be awarded to the first
congregation, no matter how many or how few, that could secure the
services of a missionary duly licensed, be he Methodist, Presbyterian,
Baptist, Congregationalist, Disciple--aye, even Anglican or Roman
Catholic. No sane man pretends, I think, that eternal salvation is
limited to any one, or excluded from any one, of those different
churches. That great essential, then, being admitted, what right have I,
or have you, dear reader, to demand more? What right have you or I to
withhold the Word of God from the orphan or the outcast, for no better
reason than such as depends upon the construction of particular words or
texts of Holy Scripture, apart from its general tenor and teaching?
Again I say, it is much to be deplored that Canada had not more
Reformers, and Conservatives too, as liberal-minded as was W. L.
Mackenzie, in regard to the maintenance and proper use of the Clergy
Reserves.
It was not the Imperial Government, it was not Lord John Russell, or Sir
Robert Peel, or Lords Durham and Sydenham, that were answerable for the
dispersion of the Clergy Reserves. What they did was to leave the
question in the hands of the Canadian Legislature. It was the old, old
story of the false mother in the "Judgment of Solomon," who preferred
that the infant should be cut in twain rather than not wrested from a
rival claimant.
I would fain hope that the future may yet see a reversal of that
disgrace to our Canadian Statute Book. Not by restoring the lands to the
Church of England, or the Churches of England and Scotland--they do not
now need them--but by endowing all Christian churches for the religious
teaching of the poorer classes in the vast North-West.
[Footnote 15: Mackenzie afterwards drew up petitions which prayed,
amongst other things, for the secularization of the Clergy Reserves, but
I judge that on that question these petitions rather represented the
opinions of other men than his own, and were specially aimed at the
Church of England monopoly.]