Middlesex, and Peter Perry and M. S. Bidwell, members for Lennox and Addington. Three others, the Baldwins and W. L. Mackenzie, were as yet co-workers outside of the House. Mackenzie worked especially through his paper The Colonial Advocate, and the creation of a press through which the people could be kept in touch with the new political life was another most important event of the period.

The new movement from the political side had thus in the course of a very few years risen to commanding influence among the people, had acquired for itself a standing ground and organ of influential work in parliament itself, had called to its front able and energetic leaders, and had created a press through which it could disseminate necessary information among the people.

But important and far-reaching in its results as was this political side of the movement it by no means exhausted its force. From the political point of view, many of the religious questions raised were quite excluded, and others occupied a subordinate place. But the religious interests of a people are too important and lie too near to their hearts to be relegated to any secondary place; and the party in power were at this juncture fated to awaken against themselves the full force of the religious as well as the political sentiments of the people. This was brought about by three or four acts of Dr. Strachan following close on the political events just sketched.

AN AWAKENING SERMON

The first of these was the sermon preached at York on July 3rd, 1825, on the death of the late Lord Bishop of Quebec. In this sermon, preached before a sympathetic audience of his own people, he expounded somewhat freely, not only his own ecclesiastical views and policy, but also his sentiments towards the other religious bodies of the country. The main points were the following: (1) The maintenance of the Divine authority and exclusive validity of the Episcopal Church polity; (2) the necessity of a state church and the moral obligation of the government to provide for its establishment and support; (3) the claim of the Church of England to be the established church of this colony and to the exclusive enjoyment of the clergy reserves; (4) disparaging references to other religious bodies, in which he represents them as disloyal, as imbued with republican and levelling opinions, as ignorant, incapable, and idle, and pictures the country which was largely supplied with the means of grace through their services as in a state of utter moral and religious destitution.

The persecution of Gourlay and the expulsion of Bidwell from the House of Assembly were scarcely more effective in arousing the political feelings of the country than was this unfortunate utterance in arousing the indignation of the religious community. This indignation immediately found a voice and a capable leader in the person of Egerton Ryerson, a young Methodist preacher then in the

first year of his ministry. He had been received on trial at the conference of 1825 and was stationed with the Rev. James Richardson on the Yonge Street and York circuit. His entrance upon the present controversy is thus described in "The Story of My Life": "The Methodists in York at that time numbered about fifty persons, young and old. The two preachers arranged to meet once in four weeks on their return from their country tours, when a social meeting of the leading members of the society was held for consultation, conversation, and prayer. One of the members of this company obtained and brought to the meeting a copy of the Archdeacon's sermon, and read the parts of it which related to the attacks on the Methodists, and the proposed method of exterminating them. The reading of these extracts produced a thrilling sensation of indignation and alarm, and all agreed that something must be written and done to defend the character and rights of Methodists and others assailed, against such attacks and such a policy. The voice of the meeting pointed to me to undertake the work. I was then designated as "The Boy Preacher,' from my youthful appearance and as the youngest minister in the church (he was then just twenty-three years of age). I objected on account of my youth and incompetence, but my objections were overruled, when I proposed as a compromise, that during our next country tour the Superintendent of the circuit (the Rev. James Richardson) and

FIRST LETTER

myself should each write on the subject, and from what we should both write, something might be compiled to meet the case. This was agreed to, and at our next social monthly meeting in the town, inquiry was made as to what had been written in defence of the Methodists and others against the attacks and policy of the Archdeacon of York. It was found that the Superintendent of the circuit had written nothing; and on being questioned, I said I had endeavoured to obey the instructions of my senior brethren. It was then insisted that I must read what I had written. I at length yielded and read my answer to the attacks made on us. The reading of my paper was attended with alternate laughter and tears on the part of the social party, all of whom insisted that it should be printed. I objected that I had never written anything for the press, and was not competent to do so, and advanced to throw my manuscript into the fire, when one of the elder members caught me by the arms and another wrenched the manuscript out of my hands, saying he would take it to the printer. Finding my efforts vain to recover it, I said if it were restored I would not destroy but re-write it and return it to the brethren to do what they pleased with it. I did so. Two of the senior brethren took the manuscript to the printer, and its publication produced a sensation scarcely less violent and general than a Fenian invasion. It is said. that before every house in Toronto (then the town

of York) might be seen groups reading and dis cussing the paper on the evening of its publication in June; and the excitement spread throughout the country. It was the first defiant defence of the Methodists, and of the equal and civil rights of all religious persuasions, the first protest and argument on legal and British constitutional grounds, against the erection of a dominant church establishment supported by the state in Upper Canada. It was the Loyalists of America and their descendants who first lifted up the voice of remonstrance against ecclesiastical despotism in the province, and unfurled the flag of equal religious rights and liberty for all religious persuasions. The sermon of the Archdeacon of York was the third formal attack made by the Church of England clergy upon the character of their unoffending Methodist brethren and those of other religious persuasions, but no defense of the assailed parties had as yet been written. At that time the Methodists had no law to secure a foot of land on which to build parsonages or chapels and in which to bury their dead; their ministers were not allowed to solemnize matrimony, and some of them had been the objects of cruel and illegal persecution on the part of magistrates and others in authority. And now they were the butt of unprovoked and unfounded aspersions from two heads of Episcopal clergy, while pursuing the 'noiseless tenor of their way' through trackless forests and bridgeless rivers and streams,