In June of the same year he was married to Mary Jane, eldest daughter of Hugh Moore, of Dundas. Of this happy union four sons and three daughters have been the issue. Of the sons, two died in early boyhood. After his marriage, Dr. Sutherland’s pastoral charges were in order—Niagara, Thorold, Drummondville, Hamilton, Yorkville, Richmond street, Toronto, and St. James street, Montreal. During his residence in Toronto he took a very active and efficient part in Sunday-school and temperance work. For some time he was president of the Ontario Temperance and Prohibitory League. His temperance sermons and other efforts in behalf of this cause will not be soon forgotten by those who came under their influence. In 1869 he was elected secretary of Conference, and was re-elected the following year. In 1871 he was appointed, with the Rev. Dr. Sanderson, fraternal delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the United States, which met in Brooklyn in 1872. On this occasion, and on all similar occasions, Dr. Sutherland has done great credit to his church and to his country. In 1873 he was appointed pastor of the St. James street Church, Montreal, and at the Conference of 1874 was elected chairman of the Montreal district. But the Montreal pastorate was brief. At the first General Conference of the Methodist church of Canada, September, 1874, Dr. Sutherland was elected general secretary and clerical treasurer of the Missionary Society, as successor to the Rev. Lachlin Taylor, D.D. This is one of the highest honours in the gift of the Methodist church; the office is one of arduous toil, but affords scope for high abilities. Since that day, Dr. Sutherland has travelled from Newfoundland and the Bermudas to British Columbia, superintending the missionary work and stimulating the missionary zeal of the Methodist church; has for several years published that admirable missionary journal _The Missionary Outlook_, and has succeeded in increasing the annual income of the society from $118,000 to nearly $200,000. The increased labours of his office have not prevented the missionary secretary from taking an active interest in all the enterprises of the church, and his voice has rung out clear and loud on every great question that has recently agitated the Methodist community. To him more than to any other man does the church owe the success of that mighty movement which culminated in 1883 in the union of all branches of Methodism in this dominion. With tongue and pen he eloquently, earnestly and constantly pleaded for consolidation; and, when all seemed hanging in the balance, his admirable generalship and eloquence in the memorable Union debate in the Toronto Conference, Peterborough, June, 1883, constrained victory to the union side. To have played such a part at such a crisis is no mean claim to grateful and unfading memory. In 1882 Dr. Sutherland was elected president of the Toronto Conference, and again in 1884.