It is very clear that, over the period leading up to the passing of the Declaratory Act and the 1893 separation, there were in Canada and especially in Ontario those who followed with great interest all that was happening on the Scottish ecclesiastical scene. Many of them could trace their roots back to Scotland: in many instances, the very names which they gave to the places where they settled identified the particular area of the old country that they had departed from. Some arrived in order
to find refuge from persecution; some arrived in the 19th Century from straths and glens cleared by hard-hearted landlords to make way for sheep. Once settled in their new surroundings, they lost no time in setting up places of worship and even these were modelled on those which they had left behind. In Lochalsh, Ontario, for instance, there still stands the church where many of the early Free Presbyterian Church deputies preached the Gospel and the Gaelic bibles left behind by long-since-departed worshippers still remain in the pews which they occupied.
When tidings of what had happened in Scotland in the 1893 Assembly reached the ears of lovers of Sion in Canada they, in due time, expressed their hearty agreement with the stand that was taken. It fell to a Mr George Forrest, who was born in an Aberdeen-shire village called New Deer to establish the first contact with the Church of Scotland. “It gives us great comfort”, he wrote to the Rev. J. R. MacKay, “to hear of the progress of the Truth in dear old Scotland, our native land. It is now 50 years since I left it, but what memories are stirred up at the remembrance of it!”
In 1901, the Synod received a Petition from this isolated remnant in Ontario who had already been compelled, out of love to Free Church principles to take up a separate position. Our Magazine explained the position: there had been two unions in Canada, one between the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church in 1861 and the other between the Canadian Presbyterian Church as then constituted and the Established Church in 1875. One minister, the Rev. Lachlan MacPherson and quite a number of people refused to enter the first union, but owing to troubles that arose in connection with the matter, he at last joined the Canadian Presbyterian Church. When, however, the second union was carried through, Mr MacPherson and another minister, the Rev. John Ross, along with two elders, one of whom was Mr Forrest, firmly voted against it, and within a few weeks of its consummation organised themselves into a separate Presbytery. It was their followers who addressed the Petition to the Synod. It ran as follows:
“Gentlemen, — We, the undersigned representatives of several groups of Presbyterians scattered throughout the western part of the province of Ontario, holding the same views, professing the same faith, and contending for the same pure worship which characterised the Church of Scotland in its best days and now contended for by you, beg to address you and present to you our case as regards Gospel ordinances, of which we may say we are entirely destitute at the present time. Although there are churches and ministers around us, yet with these we can-
not conscientiously associate and worship; we, therefore, earnestly ask you to recognise us as part of your mission field and take us under your care and providence.”
Needless to say, the Petition was received with the greatest pleasure and the Synod appointed a Committee to make arrangements for sending a minister for two or three months in the following Summer. That minister was to be the Rev. Neil Cameron. “In every place visited by us,” Mr Cameron wrote in his Synod Report of his visit, “we were received with open arms.” And among them, we may well believe, were the wide-open arms of Mr George Forrest who would have found in Mr Cameron a man after his own heart. “They are a part of our Church”, Mr Cameron wrote, “they are our brethren and our sisters in the flesh, and a goodly number of them are beloved in the Lord”. It was thus that the trans-Atlantic bond was first established.
Time does not permit me to trace, in any detail, the extension of our Church across Canada; to Winnipeg, visited by the Rev. Donald Beaton in 1909, (the Rev. Malcolm Gillies also laboured there for two years prior to his ordination); to Calgary, where the Beaton family and others maintained our testimony for many years; to Vancouver on the Pacific coast, where the Rev. James MacLeod arrived in 1916 as the first deputy. The present Free Church sent a deputy hot-foot after him. It was here that the skilful hands of Mr Hugh MacKay prepared the foundation for a church and then laid one stone upon another until the handsome church which still stands on the corner of Fifteenth Avenue and Fraser Street was completed in 1922. Not only did Hugh MacKay build the church, he was also responsible for conducting the services in it over many years until the Rev. Dr R. MacDonald was settled in Vancouver in 1951.
There have been times when the strength of the bond has been tested. The congregation in Chesley followed their minister in 1930 when he adopted a view on Sabbath-keeping which was at variance with that held by the Church. Not till 1975 were we to be back there. At that time, and largely through the efforts of the late Rev. Donald Campbell, who was at the time the Convener of the Dominions and Overseas Committee, the Toronto and Chesley congregations of the Presbyterian Reformed Church united with our Church and services were resumed in Chesley and the prospects were bright. In Toronto also the situation was very promising. We are glad that Mr Gerrit Schuit is with us today for it was he who led the way as far as the Chesley congregation was concerned. At present — as we celebrate our Centenary — in the mysterious and wonderful providence of the Lord, our witness in Ontario is confined to Chesley and would be
almost extinct were it not for the faithfulness of our friends there. Although, for the most part, their antecedents are to be traced back to Holland rather than Scotland, they, in 1989, remained faithful to the Church’s witness when others, of Scottish extraction, following the lead of the Toronto minister, failed to do so. After these congregations came under the umbrella of the Church a succession of deputies went out to Canada and those of us who visited Ontario will never forget the kind way in which we were received and the hospitality extended. It is, I think, right that, in this connection, the names of the late Mr and Mrs James Fraser should be mentioned. We were sorry to hear of Mr Fraser’s recent and sudden passing. We have no services now in Toronto although we hope there are still to be found there those who love the testimony of our Church. The same is true of Winnipeg.
In Vancouver, Mr John A. MacLeod holds the Free Presbyterian fort. Were it not for the stand taken by him and a few others in 1989, the APC’s would have extinguished the Free Presbyterian witness there and neither manse nor church would have remained in our possession. There are at present four communicant members and one or two adherents left in the Vancouver congregation who are Free Presbyterians. But we hope the Lord will yet revive His cause there. After all, there were only six people meeting together in Brucefield, Ontario, when George Forrest took up his pen to write that letter which was to lead to the formation of the trans-Atlantic bond. Vancouver is not without a Free Presbyterian witness as long as John MacLeod and our friends are there; we are sorry that it was not possible for him to be present here today.
The trans-Atlantic bond, we said, continues to be strong. There are still those who, even after so many years, would express the same sentiments as George Forrest recorded in his diary: “I am very thankful that a kind providence led me to cast in my lot with the Free Presbyterian Church, for it is small and despised by some who ought to know better. Yet they have thus far maintained a Scriptural form of worship when large Churches are corrupting it with man’s inventions.” They would agree with those who sent this declaration to the Synod in 1906, at a time when there was a move for union with the Free Church and some of our ministers took their departure: “The Free Presbyterians in Ontario are in full sympathy with the finding of the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church regarding union with other Churches; that, in our judgment, union with the Free Church in the present circumstances would hinder rather than promote spiritual life among both minister and people; that we feel thankful that
the Synod stood so firm by the Constitution of the Church, and feel grieved that any of the Free Presbyterian ministers should so far forget their first love as to leave her communion at a time when help was so much needed.”
Humbly and thankfully we are met today to acknowledge the Lord’s wonderful kindness in maintaining His own cause in connection with us at home and abroad. Small and despised we may be but we are still here. Those who prophesied our swift extinction have been proved to be false prophets. As early as 1900 one organ of the Press said: “Secessionism” — that is how they described us — “in the Highlands is a spent power. At one time its members were full of activity, gathering to communions and so on; but now it is little heard of, and the expectation is that, as the old die out, the younger people will rejoin the Free Church or retire into the Established Church.” “The interest of newspaper reporters”, the Rev. J. S. Sinclair commented, “who like the Athenians of old are constantly in quest of some new thing, may certainly have spent itself in regard to our Church, but sometimes the less interest they have in a Church the better. It is not always good carrion such eagles are in search of.”
The 1843 Disruption had received wide coverage but there has been hardly a mention of the 1893 stand! That we are the Disruption Free Church is evident to anyone who researches the matter with impartiality and we are also very mindful of that event in our history. The Rev. Donald Beaton, in his own inimitable way, wrote of those who evidently were carried away with the idea that they were called upon to prophesy and the burden of their prophecy was the extinction of the Free Presbyterian Church. “There was no hesitancy in their utterances”, Mr Beaton wrote, “the Free Presbyterian Church was doomed and they were the men that said it and must announce it.” It is over 100 years since this “order of prophets” arose. “Their prophetic utterances came to nothing and their bodies have long ago turned to dust. It would be a wise thing for prophets of doom to look to other quarters and other events.”
“Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”
The frowns of the world are among the blessings of the Christian. The prosperity of fools shall destroy them. “Him whom I shall kiss,” said Judas, “take Him”; so when the world kisseth, it often betrays.
— Thomas Watson