Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An AutobiographyThompson, Samuel
History
Reminiscences of a Canadian Pioneer for the last Fifty Years: An Autobiography
Thompson, Samuel
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ontario; Thompson, Samuel, 1810-1886; Toronto (Ont.) -- Biography; Toronto (Ont.) -- History
Mr. Gamble, as I have said, was foremost in all public improvements. To
his exertions are chiefly due the opening and construction of the
Vaughan plank road, from near Weston, by St. Andrew's, to Woodbridge,
Pine Grove, and Kleinburg; which gave an easy outlet to a large tract of
country to the north-west of Toronto, and enabled the farmers to reach
our market to their and our great mutual advantage.
He was a man who made warm friends and active enemies, being very
outspoken in the expression of his opinions and feelings. But even his
strongest political foes came to him in full confidence that they were
certain to get justice at his hands. And occasionally his friends found
out, that no inducement of personal regard could warp his judgment in
any matter affecting the rights of other men. In this way he made some
bitter adversaries on his own side of politics.
Among Mr. Gamble's public acts was the erection of the church at Mimico,
and that at Pine Grove; in aid of which he was the chief promoter,
giving freely both time and means to their completion. For years he
acted as lay-reader at one or other of those churches, travelling some
distance in all weathers to do so. His whole life, indeed, was spent in
benefiting his neighbours in all possible ways.
He died in December, 1873, and was buried at Woodbridge.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
A CHOICE OF A CHURCH.
I have mentioned that I was educated as a Swedenborgian, or rather a
member of the New Jerusalem Church, as the followers of Emanuel
Swedenborg prefer to be called. As a boy, I was well read in his works,
and was prepared to tilt with all comers in his cause. But I grew less
confident as I became more conversant with the world and with general
literature. At the age of fifteen I was nominated a Sunday-school
teacher in a small Swedenborgian chapel in the Waterloo road, and
declined to act because the school was established with the object of
converting from the religion of their parents the children of poor Roman
Catholic families in that neighbourhood, which I thought an insidious,
and therefore an evil mode of disseminating religious doctrine. Of
course, this was a sufficiently conceited proceeding on the part of so
young a theologian. But the same feeling has grown up with me in after
life. I hold that Christians are ill-employed, who spend their strength
in missionary attempts to change the creed of other branches of the
Christian Church, while their efforts at conversion might be much better
utilised in behalf of the heathen, or, what is the same thing in effect,
the untaught multitudes in our midst who know nothing whatever of the
teachings of the Gospel of Christ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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