and forbearance would inevitably have secured all their rightful demands and their demands were in the main rightful. Moreover this would have been secured with the good will and assistance of their kin beyond the sea from whom the colonists derived their English love of liberty, and without the help of their French allies, who were actuated by the hate of England rather than by the love of America.

The part of Dr. Ryerson's book which treats of the American revolution seems to be wholly in favour of those who maintain that war is always a blunder and a crime. But we are left in some uncertainty in this case as to which party is entitled to the bad preeminence as blunderers and criminals.

We still ask ourselves sometimes what might have been if the counsels of Edmund Burke in England and Joseph Galloway in America had prevailed, and the whole British people had presented a united front against all falsehood and oppression. But the God of battles, the God of all the earth, ruled otherwise. His thoughts were not our thoughts, neither were our ways His ways. We submit to His ruling, and yet we trust that He was in those troublous times leading His people by ways they knew not to the larger and more steadfast achievement of both law and liberty for all the nations.

That portion of Dr. Ryerson's work which treats of the United Empire Loyalists in their pioneer Canadian life has always been interesting, but in

PIONEER LIFE

our times there is a new awakening of interest in the subject. We are now far enough away from the times of the first settlers to find a certain quaintness in all that was theirs, and we are also in danger of losing many of the traditions of those times if we do not speedily secure in some way the collections and recollections of those who stood in closest connections with the past. Dr. Ryerson's book is of special value to Canadians from this point of view. It is written by a maker and the son of a maker of Canada. And if it has something of the irregularity of all such early things, it is full of the spirit of liberty and law and truth, and buoyant with the breezy strength that makes "this Canada of ours" so dear to all Canadians.

CHAPTER XII

LATER CHURCH WORK AND CLOSING DAYS

FTER his appointment to the office of chief

superintendent of education, Dr. Ryerson still maintained both his connection with and his active influence and leadership in the Methodist conference. In that influence he was closely associated with his two elder brothers, the Revs. John and William Ryerson. The former down to his death in 1878, was respected by the whole conference for his eminent gifts as a legislator and administrator of Methodist polity. All three were active and able promoters of the reunion of the British with the Canadian Wesleyans which took place in 1847, and in the union of the Lower Canada District which took place in 1854. These various unions as well as the growth of the church introduced new elements and new leadership into the church in which three parties might now be distinctly traced. The British members of the conference with such men as Dr. Wood, Dr. Rice and Dr. Evans as prominent representatives constituted an able class of preachers, strongly conservative of all the views and usages of English Methodism. A thoroughly Canadian and progressive section of the conference was led and repre

sented by such men as the Hurlburts, James Elliott, Jeffers and Spenser; while a more conservative Canadian section was represented by the Ryersons, Green, Jones, and Rose, with such younger men as Sanderson and Nelles. It would not be right to call these sections of the conference parties in the modern sense of the term, for there was no organization or pledged following; and in all the sections there were many men of such strong individuality that they followed no man. But history had given to each of these sections its peculiar tendency and character so definitely that the attitude of each on any great question might be safely predicted. The Ryersons, with the more conservative Canadians, were in general a mediating influence between the British and the more radical Canadians, and in that way did not a little to bring about and cement the unity of the body.

But in 1854 an incident occurred which for a time made Dr. Ryerson appear as the most extreme of radicals in Methodist polity, and even threatened to sever his connection with the conference. An intimate friend, a man whose Methodist lineage reached back to John Wesley's day, a man of spotless Christian character and life, and one active and useful in many fields of Christian work was "dropped" from church membership for non-attendance at class. The circumstance was at once so painful, and, though according to the letter