BY THE REV. JOHN R. MACKAY, M.A., INVERNESS,
SYNOD’S DEPUTY, 1913.
THE following Report was given by Mr. Mackay at the meeting of Synod on the 11th November:—
MODERATOR AND BRETHREN,—Having been asked by the Canadian Committee, in March last, to proceed to Canada as the Church’s Deputy to that Dominion for this year, I, after due reflection, thought it my duty not to decline. In company with Mr. Malcolm Gillies, whom the Canadian Committee had asked to take Mr. William Matheson’s place as Student Missionary in Winnipeg, I sailed from Greenock on 17th May, and after a prosperous voyage arrived in New York on 25th May.
On the following day, being Monday, Mr. Gillies left New York and, travelling via Chicago and Minneapolis, arrived in Winnipeg on Thursday, 29th May. Mr. Gillies was thus in time to officiate in Winnipeg on the first Sabbath of June. I, on the other hand, after paying a short visit on Tuesday to friends at Princeton, left New York only on Wednesday and, travelling via Buffalo, reached Brucefield on Thursday evening, where on arrival I met with a hearty reception from the friends there. Here, as I need scarcely say, I was Mrs. Forrest’s guest, and her kind home became, as in the past, in a sense my headquarters during my mission to Canada. My first Sabbath in Canada was thus spent in Brucefield. There was, for the place, a goodly audience on the Sabbath, representative friends having come to welcome the Church’s Deputy for the year from Lochalsh, Newton, Toronto, Detroit, and East Williams; and I somehow got the conviction that Sabbath day that in coming to the American Continent the Lord had not forsaken me. One missed some loved faces from the Brucefield gathering, such as Mr. George Forrest and Mrs. Fraser, but one was glad to find Mr. Daniel Clark and Mr. George Baird still able to convene with us, as well as to learn that as often as Mr. Clark is able to come over from Seaforth to Brucefield—a distance of seven miles—the Brucefield meeting is still, if diminished, being carried on mainly through the instrumentality of those two men. Mr. Clark, I am pleased to say, was able during the course of the summer to visit along with me almost every station within the Ontario group. Members of the Synod who have made Mrs. Forrest’s acquaintance, will be glad to learn that, although in a very frail state of health, she also was able to venture out not only to this first service, but to practically all the services which, during my sojourn in Canada, were held in Brucefield.
In Brucefield, with which I comprise Seaforth, I tarried up to Wednesday morning, when I set out for Winnipeg. Our late friend, Mr. George Forrest, used to say that Canada was a land of magnificent distances, and whether the phrase be regarded as a description or as a truism, I do not know that at any time I had such a strong and vivid impression of the truth and accuracy of the saying as I had now on the way out from Brucefield to Winnipeg. From Brucefield the train brought me to Sarnia, a port-town, which is at the south end of Lake Huron. There, on Wednesday afternoon, I got aboard the S.S. “Huronie,” and it was not until about nine a.m. on Friday morning that our ship arrived at Port Arthur on the western shore of Lake Superior. One had to remain only a few minutes, however, at Port Arthur, when the C.P.R. train for the west pulled up, and so, after something like other thirteen hours by railroad, I arrived in Winnipeg late on Friday night.
Winnipeg.
Here I was kindly entertained for over three Sabbaths by Mr. and Mrs. William Sinclair, at 430 Young Street. My time whilst in Winnipeg was fully occupied. On the Saturday following my arrival, Mr. Lachlan A. Ross, elder, Winnipeg, and I formed ourselves into a Kirk-Session. This, I believe, was in the circumstances quite constitutional. Mr. D. Clark, elder, Seaforth, Ontario, and Mr. H. Scott, elder, Lobo, Ontario, had been, it is true, appointed assessors so as—along with Mr. L. A. Ross and a deputy—to form at any time a regular Kirk-Session at Winnipeg. But considerations of health and of distance made the presence of either assessor in Winnipeg a practical impossibility. In these circumstances, basing our procedure on the well-known view of at least some Church lawyers, but especially on the words of Matt. xviii. 16, “that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established,” even as we afterwards learned that the Rev. Walter Scott had based his similar procedure, when he visited Winnipeg last year, on the words of Matt. xviii. 20, “for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” we constituted, as I have said, our first Kirk-Session in Winnipeg, on Saturday, 7th June. We, at this meeting, resolved (1) that it was desirable that an additional new elder should be ordained in the Free Presbyterian Congregation of Winnipeg, and that it should be our aim, if possible, to bring this ordination to realisation on the third Sabbath of my prospective stay in Winnipeg. Further (2) it was concluded that (d.v.) the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper should be administered on the second Sabbath of my prospective stay in this city, and that the usual services in connection with the administration of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper should be observed by us. Intimations in the whole aforesaid sense were therefore given by me at all the services on the first Sabbath of my stay in Winnipeg, that is, on the second Sabbath of June. On account, I may say, of some untoward incidents which shortly before this had taken place in our congregation in Winnipeg, I entered on my public work there not without some considerable misgivings. I was gratified therefore to find substantial gatherings met at all our services on that second Sabbath of June—there being, I should say, some fifty persons present at the first service, some seventy at the second (Gaelic) service, and about the same number at the third or evening service. I take leave to say that the thought occurred to me as in this far distant city I saw so many young men and women, mostly all of whom had but recently left Scotland, that the Church at home should cease mourning on account of a providential migration of our people towards the Great North-West, and should rather put forth a greater effort to follow our people to these far-off lands. If this work were heartily taken in hand, we should have our own returned to us with usury.
During the week-days following this first Sabbath at Winnipeg, I endeavoured to put in some visits. With the services of a Communion season, however, so close on hand, little could be accomplished in the direction of a general visitation, even if Mr. Gillies proved, as he did, a great help in giving an occasional service during the Communion season. The attendances on the preparatory Communion days were only a little less than those noted on the first Sabbath day’s services, and on the Communion Sabbath itself, the numbers rose to something like one hundred and twenty. I am venturing on submitting these figures, because I have had the feeling that the Church might be anxious to know how exactly our congregation in Winnipeg stood in the matter of numbers. I found the services, and especially the Communion season, a comfort to my own soul, and I am not without hope that it may have seemed so to some others also.
When the Communion services were over, I seriously took up the business of visiting our people in Winnipeg, and although, of course, I did not visit all, I think I may say that I visited all the communicants and nearly all the families that are in connection with us there. Another matter that took up some time in the course of the week-days intervening between the third and fourth Sabbaths of June was the business of getting the congregational property in Winnipeg on a proper footing. I may explain that some two years ago the Winnipeg congregation, through its Building Committee, bought from one Mr. Hodgkins a lot of ground, at 514 M’Ghee Street, with an ultimate intention of building a church thereon. This lot cost the congregation 2,600 dollars, and of that sum the congregation were in a position to pay down 1,000 dollars. So as, however, to pay Mr. Hodgkins the entire sum due him—as otherwise 2,600 dollars would not have bought the lot—the Congregational Committee, by mortgaging the lot, received from Mr. Peter Campbell, Carman, a loan of 1,600 dollars, and the Committee were in this way able to bring the congregation’s business engagements with Mr. Hodgkins to a satisfactory close. The purchasing of the lot in the first instance from Mr. Hodgkins, and the mortgaging of the same lot in favour of Mr. P. Campbell in the next instance, were all done in the name of Mr. Lachlan A. Ross, and those transactions were, in that sense, entered and recorded in the Land Titles Records of the City of Winnipeg, and all because the Committee felt that at the stage at which they had taken up the matter this was the most feasible and advantageous way for the congregation to do business. It was felt, however, by all, that the time had come when the lot should be explicitly recognised in the Land Titles Office of the City of Winnipeg as belonging to the Free Presbyterian Congregation of Winnipeg. Along with Mr. Lachlan A. Ross, I accordingly took counsel with Mr. M’Clure (of the firm of Crichton, M’Clure, & Cohen) who, I had learned, was doing business for Mr. Peter Campbell, our mortgagee, and with less difficulty in fact than I had anticipated, I was able before I left Winnipeg so to make arrangements as that the said lot is now explicitly recognised in the Land Titles Office of the City of Winnipeg as held by three trustees, forming a corporate body, who are acting for the First Free Presbyterian Congregation of Winnipeg—as the congregation is now officially spoken of. The trustees were, of course, appointed at a regular meeting of the congregation, by the congregation itself; and I may further add, in this connection, that the said trustees have willingly come under a solemn obligation to administer this property for the Free Presbyterian Congregation of Winnipeg as and only as that congregation adheres to the original constitution of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, as that constitution is set forth in our Deed of Separation.
At the usual Prayer Meeting, on the Wednesday after the third Sabbath of June, I baptised two children, Hugh Rose Sinclair, and Lily Mackenzie, and on the following Saturday on account of the mother’s health I baptised another child, John Angus Reid, at the home of the Reids. John Angus, I regret to add, lived only a few weeks after his baptism.
The business and duty of making a new elder was in the meantime not unattended to, and as at our meeting of Kirk-Session on the Saturday before the Communion, it was found that the members of the congregation, with practical unanimity, had elected Mr. Donald Macleod, a member in full communion of the Winnipeg congregation, the Kirk-Session resolved to proceed to ordain Mr. Donald Macleod to the eldership, and the usual edictal notice was given of this intention. On the fourth Sabbath of June therefore, that being my last Sabbath in Winnipeg, Mr. Donald Macleod was at the first service of the day ordained to the eldership. The occasion gave me a fitting opportunity of making to the congregation a statement of our distinctive principles, and of giving an epitome of the reasons for them.
The prospects of the congregation of Winnipeg fill me with the liveliest interest, and I am inclined to think that if our cause there is properly attended to, the Free Presbyterian Congregation of Winnipeg will ultimately become a strong one. I am thankful to be able to report that Mr. Malcolm Gillies is giving good satisfaction as a Student Missionary there, and that the congregations which come out to hear him from Sabbath to Sabbath are numerically on an average if anything rather larger than those I had there seen with my eyes. But it is very essential that before Mr. Gillies leaves Winnipeg, a suitable person should be sent there to take his place. For the Church at home ought not to be left without knowing that our congregation in Winnipeg have come under very considerable responsibilities. I believe they have to pay 20 dollars per month for the hall in which they regularly worship; they are, between one thing or another, expected to pay something approaching 400 dollars per annum to their Student Missionary; they have to pay 20 dollars per month for interest on a 1,600 dollars’ loan; they have an extra, although not large, bill to pay their lawyer, Mr. M’Clure, on account of the transactions which I have described above; they have to pay Mr. Gillies over £20 on account of his passage from Glasgow to Winnipeg; they paid my own expenses in going there handsomely. Now, how is all this outlay to be met? Mainly by church-door collections. The only other item they find available arises in this way. On the lot of land on M’Ghee Street there is a dwelling-house for which the congregation gets 30 dollars per month. This enables them to pay the 20 dollars’ interest on loan already mentioned, and still leaves them with a margin of 10 dollars per month for other uses. If this margin of 10 dollars per month were allowed to accumulate, it would soon of itself go far towards paying up the loan of 1,600 dollars. As matters stand they find themselves necessitated, or at least they used to find themselves necessitated, to use up this margin. Notwithstanding all these burdens, if Winnipeg is regularly supplied, and the congregation itself, as at present, work cordially for one end, I have no doubt they will be able to give an honourable account of themselves, and one would hope that ere long they might have a regular pastorate instituted among them.
When I was staying in Winnipeg I had a kind invitation, mainly in virtue of two young men from my own congregation in Inverness, to proceed to Calgary, which is some eight hundred miles farther west, with the assurance that if I gave them but one Sabbath my expenses should be all met. It was with a deep and sincere regret that I had to decline this invitation. From communications which I have since had from Calgary, I reckon that it would be a hopeful thing if we were able to start a Free Presbyterian Congregation in Calgary also.
On the Monday after the third Sabbath spent by me in Winnipeg, Mr. William Matheson, Student Missionary, who for some weeks previously had seemed as if he were to bid a long farewell to the Free Presbyterian Church, which he had for years served with much devotion, visited me (not, of course, for the first time) to say that it had become very clear to his mind that in concluding that he would dissociate himself from the Free Presbyterian Church, he had fallen into a grave error of judgment; that the only effect his short isolation from us had upon his mind was in the way of convincing him of the superiority of the Free Presbyterian way to any way he might himself have thought of devising; that his wish was to go on to study for the Free Presbyterian Church, and that he placed himself very much in my hands as to what he should now do. My advice to him was to proceed to Scotland and there finish his theological course in connection with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Mr Matheson, as the Synod knows, is now studying divinity with Rev. Donald Beaton at Wick.
Ontario.
On the following day, being Tuesday, I turned my face towards Ontario again, and on the evening of the following Friday found myself in the home of our warm-hearted friends, the M’Leish’s of West William.
Williams District.
My stay in this district included three Sabbath days. I stayed for nearly a week with my friends in West Williams. Then, as my second Sabbath in this district was a Communion Sabbath, I removed on the Wednesday before the Communion to the house of Mr. Duncan Macmillan, which is beside the church in Lochaber, where I was hospitably entertained during the remainder of my stay in the Williams district. I need scarcely say that during the Communion days, as I had no assistant and the thermometer was sometimes as high as 92° in the shade, I could do little more during the Communion season than attend to the Communion Services, but with the Communion Services over, I took in hand a visitation of practically all the families connected with our Lochaber Congregation in West and East Williams, in Parkhill, in Ailsa Craig, and in Lobo. I am in this connection indebted to Mr. Bisset and to other kind friends who freely placed their own services as well as their conveyances at my disposal in visiting our people, whensoever I had a mind to do so. Perhaps the best congregations that I saw this year in Lochaber were on my third and last Sabbaths there. I baptised while there two children, Elizabeth Ross and Jean Ross, great-great-grandchildren of Peter Stewart, the famous catechist of Strathspey, Strathdearn, and Strathnairn.
The congregations meeting in Lochaber were, I would say, considerably less in numbers than when I was there ten years ago. Death has removed not a few, some have migrated towards the Great North-West, and, of course, among the younger generation losses are always incident to congregations that have not regularly the ordinary privileges which go along with a regular pastorate. Still, there is a substantial, if comparatively small, congregation meeting every Sabbath at Lochaber, and they have the privilege of being presided over and regularly ministered to by two worthy men, Archibald MacLeish and Hugh Scott, both in the office of the eldership. A feature which struck me as very promising is the harmony that prevails among them, and I am hopeful that if, ere things come to too low an ebb, a God-sent minister be placed among them, the cause would yet flourish in East Williams.
Lochalsh.
Having thus fulfilled what was to me a pleasant ministry in East Williams, I set my face towards Lochalsh, where I arrived on the Thursday before the third Sabbath of July. Here also I remained three weeks, and I must acknowledge my sense of great indebtedness to Mrs. Matheson, whose guest I was all the time, and to her son, Mr. Murdo Matheson, who placed his own and his conveyance-service as freely as could be at my own and the congregation’s disposal in visiting, besides such of our people as live in the Ashfield district, people as far removed from Lochalsh as are Goderich, Ripley, and Kincardine. The ordinary Sabbath services at Lochalsh have been for some time now conducted by Mr. Donald MacDonald, whom I hope to see one day a recognised student of our Church. I understand the services at Lochalsh are not, on ordinary Sabbaths, better, if so well attended as are the services at East Williams; but, during my sojourn there, I should say the congregation that gathered in the Lochalsh meeting-house were not much below what I had seen them ten years ago. As in Winnipeg and in East Williams, the second of the three Sabbaths I spent here was Communion Sabbath. In no place did I feel, in preaching, getting nearer the people than in Lochalsh.
Kincardine.
I was able to give only one Sabbath to Kincardine. There is not, nor has there for some years been, a regular Sabbath service in connection with our congregation in Kincardine. The congregations that gathered there on the second Sabbath of August, however, were so good that I began to cherish the hope, if I might be allowed to make use, so far, of the words of our Lord in another connection, that the cause in Kincardine is “not dead, but sleepeth.” Our kind friend, Mr. Hugh Mackenzie, whose guest I was for a period shorter than I could have wished, enabled me, by putting his own services and his conveyance at my disposal, to make a few visits in the district of Kincardine also.
Chesley.
After being one Sabbath in Kincardine, I set out about 10 a.m. on Monday for Chesley, where I tarried for four days, and spent a very pleasant time with our friend and brother, Rev. Walter Scott. I had, during these days, an opportunity of forming the personal acquaintance of a goodly number of Mr. Scott’s congregation by visiting them in Mr. Scott’s company in their several homes. They gave me, as the Church’s representative, a great welcome, and I am bound to say that they impressed me as an intelligent people, in genuine sympathy with evangelical religion. I took the service for Mr. Scott on Wednesday night in his church, and my feeling at least was that my message did not fall on unsympathetic ears.
Newton.
On Thursday I bade our friends at Chesley farewell and came on to Newton, where I remained exactly a week. I had sincerely wished to have given two Sabbaths in Newton, but found that as, in keeping with what seemed to be the general mind, I had given three Sabbaths to all those places where the Communion had up till now been observed, it was practically impossible for me to give more than one Sabbath to Newton. I felt, and the people of Newton felt less disappointed on this account, inasmuch as I had been able to secure the services of Mr. William Matheson, student, for Newton, on the Sabbath previous to my going there. The Free Presbyterian cause at Newton, a cause that was never very strong, was badly shattered a few years ago in connection with circumstances with which the Synod are quite conversant. The remnant, however, that are sincerely attached to the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, are not less hearty in their attachment than they used to be, and they appreciate very much that one should be sent among them even for a week. Through Mr. Phineas MacDonald’s kindness, for his guest I was all the time I was at Newton, I was able to visit not only the few families connected with us in that part of Canada, but even others who in some sense, I suppose, still claim to be Free Presbyterians, but whose conduct as such is rather inexplicable.
Wardsville.
From Newton I proceeded on the Thursday before the third Sabbath of August via London to Wardsville, which is not many miles from the northern shore of Lake Erie. A few people sincerely attached to the Free Presbyterian cause at Wardsville have kind remembrances of Rev. Donald MacLeod, now of Harris, as the person who opened a well there—in the sense of a means of grace—in connection with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. I was able only to give two week-night services at Wardsville—one held in the house of Mr. MacLennan, whose guest I was; the other held in the house of a Mr. MacIver, a retired gentleman, whose place of nativity, I understood from him, was Resolis, Ross-shire. The people in this neighbourhood, although not professedly Free Presbyterians, on both occasions gathered in goodly numbers, and He that has commanded us to sow beside all waters, may ordain His own appointed means for the furtherance of the kingdom of His dear Son here also.
Detroit, U.S.A.
Leaving Wardsville on the morning of Saturday, 23rd August, I arrived in Detroit, U.S.A., on the afternoon of that same day. I remained two Sabbaths in Detroit, the guest of very kind friends, Mr. and Mrs. R. S. Mackenzie, 74 E. Grand Boulevard. The congregations in Detroit, I am sorry to say, were meagre. At the same time there are a few there who should deem it a calamity if the Free Presbyterian services, begun a few years ago by Rev. D. Macleod, Harris, should have to be discontinued. Certainly in a financial sense they are not a burden to the Mission, nor to the Church at home, but rather the opposite. I felt as I had come to Detroit that I was standing in need of some rest, and so, save for the two Sabbath services already referred to, and two week-night meetings, I did little more than rest whilst I was in this city.
Brucefield.
Thus recruited, I came to Brucefield on the Wednesday before the first Sabbath of September, where, as I think had been the rule in past years, the yearly services of this Mission were practically brought to a close. It was a very pleasant season. Here I had the valuable assistance of the Rev. Walter Scott of Chesley. The Lord’s people gathered in almost unusually large numbers, and there were moments in which we had the conviction that the Lord had not denied us His presence. The last service I did in Brucefield was to baptise the youngest child and son of Mr. Alex. Macfarlane, once of Tarbert, Loch Fyne. Thus my mission to Canada as a deputy, in the strict sense, was finished.
Toronto.
On my way home, as arranged by our friend, Mr. Roderick Campbell, I preached on a Wednesday evening to a congregation of about 200 people in the city of Toronto, Mr. Dempster, of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, having kindly put his church at my disposal for this service on this occasion. It was my last service on the American continent.
Altogether I preached, when on this mission, over sixty times; and, taking the services as a whole, I have to say they were as pleasant experiences as almost any I had in my life. I expected to be received as an old friend, and I was not disappointed. The reception I everywhere met with could not be kinder or heartier. I shall not speak of spiritual results following, but I may venture to say, as speaking of what I have been assured of, that the Lord’s people, at more than one place, found the services to have been to the refreshing of their souls. This I say, I trust not for self-praise, but to the praise of free grace. The voyage to the home country was an ideal one, and thus I reached my own home in comfort on Monday, 15th September.
In the matter of finances, I have to report that I received 100 dollars from Mr. William Sinclair on behalf of our congregation in Winnipeg, 60 dollars from Mr. R. S. Mackenzie, Detroit, on behalf of the remnant there, and 400 dollars from Mr. Donald T. Mackenzie on behalf of the Canadian Group of Missions. After paying travelling expenses, and expenses on account of the supply of my own pulpit in Inverness during a nineteen weeks’ absence, I had the sum of £30 15/- over; and that sum, as the brethren will have seen from the November Magazine, I handed over to Mr. Augus Clunas, General Treasurer, as a contribution towards our Sustentation Fund.
In conclusion, I beg to give hearty thanks to my brethren in the ministry who with such free willingness supplied my place in Inverness in my absence. And let my last word in this report be by way of rendering thanks unto the Lord who, I believe, in answer to the prayers of many, bestowed upon me such a comfortable through-bearing.