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W. R. Warren, ed.
Centennial Convention Report (1910)

 

Canada: The Status of Our Work, Our Drawbacks,
and Our Hope for the Future

R. W. Stevenson, Toronto, Can.

Carnegie Hall, Thursday Morning, October 14.

      I shall ask only, Is Canada worth while? Until quite recently many people, even in Canada, did not realize the greatness of their own country. Surprised were they when told that it is four hundred thousand square miles greater than the United States. It forms about one-third of the whole British Empire, only a little less in size than the continent of Europe. If the United States were set down in Canada, the whole of British Columbia and the half of Alberta would be left out. British Columbia alone is larger than France, Italy, Portugal and Switzerland combined.

      Less than four hundred years ago Canada was a vast solitude of untilled plains, unbroken forests and lonely mountains. To-day it is occupied from [221] ocean to ocean by over seven millions of people. Lord Strathcona has said that "Canada will have as great a population as the British Isles by the close of the twentieth century." We live, it is true, in a latitude of frost and snow, but in this latitude have been born and reared races that have become distinguished in art, in war, in religion, and in all that promotes the highest civilization.

      The population of Canada is being added to every year by hundreds of thousands of those who are nobly assisting in changing the forests and great prairies into well-cultivated regions with their villages, towns and cities which are fast becoming centers of trade and ring with the music of industry. Her rivers, canals and great lakes are thronged with the ships of a rapidly increasing commerce, which is being constantly increased by our great transcontinental railways. Great districts which once seemed a wilderness of rocks and shrubs are now yielding vast stores of gold, silver, copper, nickel, iron and coal. Canada contains some of the richest nickel and silver mines in the world. Her mineral resources are as yet only being touched.
Photograph, page 222
R. W. STEVENSON.
We are standing upon the shores of stupendous mineral wealth. And what shall I say of her lumber, her water power, her fisheries, her grain-producing territory--sixty millions of acres of which are as yet unoccupied? Canada is rapidly becoming one of the greatest grain-producing countries in the world. Her stock raising and her fruit growing are worthy of special mention. She is becoming the rival of older countries in the markets of the world as a producer of butter and cheese, and fruit is grown in great abundance in the Maritime Provinces, in Ontario and British Columbia.

      Most of our Canadian churches are as thoroughly consecrated to the work as any that can be found. The brethren have not come into this work through great religious excitement, but after much mature thought and well-balanced judgment they have accepted the plea of the Disciples of Christ as the very best thing in the religious world, and the majority of them are determined to stand by it to the end.

      The most of our churches have a commendable missionary spirit. Canada has given a noble band of missionaries to the foreign field. The first grave dug on the foreign field was for a daughter of Nova Scotia. A daughter of Ontario knocked at the doors of Tibet and suffered the loss of all that was dear to her that Christ might be preached there. The Canadian brethren are anxious for the conversion of the word to Christ. We believe in preaching the gospel to every creature under heaven. We believe that it is by the foolishness of preaching that God sees fit to save them that believe. Men and women are coming to our shores from every nation under heaven. We are anxious to make our God their God and our religion their religion.

      The mission of the Canadian churches is to sound the call for a united church. They long ago have discovered the evil of divisions in the religious world; that these are contrary to the prayer of Christ, out of harmony with the teaching and experiences of the apostles, and a source of extreme weakness.

      One of our greatest drawbacks has been, and in some places still is, the need of more men thoroughly qualified for the work. Some of our Canadian churches have thought that any one could do the speaking, as they were accustomed to phrase it. But the speaking was generally in first principles. There was great fear of the one-man power in the church. These were days of much controversy and sometimes sharp contentions over organized missionary effort and instrumental music in the churches. Instead of a dignified and intelligent presentation of the truth, there were sometimes cruel and embarrassing tirades which were calculated to subvert the hearers and hinder the progress of the cause of Christ.

      One of our greatest needs is to provide competent men, masters of assemblies, for our churches, also a [222] thoroughly up-to-date Bible-training school in Canada, not a school to give an elementary education, but a school where men who have a fair education can be trained in a knowledge of the word of God and how to preach it to the edification of the churches and the conversion of men to Christ. If our churches made this demand of our young men and assisted them in making the necessary preparation for the work of the ministry, one of our most serious drawbacks would be removed.

      The Canadian churches have called into the work of the ministry as many men as the same number of churches anywhere on the continent. Prince Edward Island, with her eight churches in a population of one hundred and eight or ten thousand inhabitants, has given to the work of the ministry about twenty-five men, besides the pioneers. Some of these are highly honored in the councils of the brotherhood, some of them professors in our colleges, some leaders in our missionary movements, and the rest preaching the gospel--some of them in some of the largest churches in Canada and the United States. What shall I say of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick? They have nearly, if not altogether, as many of their sons engaged in the work of the churches, all of whom are honored men. Some are on our mission fields, some editors and teachers, and all preachers of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Of the men of Ontario you have heard. Their value to the cause of Christ can never be fully appreciated nor known this side of eternity.

      We have no place for discouragement. Our sky is not overcast by heavy clouds that threaten defeat and dismay. The Sun of righteousness still shines in our northern sky. Our hope is that the second century shall bring forth greater prosperity for the Disciples of Christ than the century just closed.

      In Canada the question of organic union has been considered as never before. Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists shall surely be one in the near future, and we hope that that union may lead to the union of all immersionists. Then will the church be fair as the moon, glorious as the sun and terrible as an army with banners. May the Lord ever help us to preach the Word. Let our battle-cry ever be, "Back to Jerusalem!" and "Where the Bible speaks, we speak, and where the Bible is silent, we are silent." And by the help of God we shall carry the battle to the gates of every enemy of God and men, and the greatest enemy is sectarianism.

 

[CCR 221-223]


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Centennial Convention Report (1910)

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