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
How much to be regretted is it, that instead of splitting up the Clergy
Reserves into fragments, the friends of religious education had not
joined their forces for the purpose of endowing all Christian
denominations with the like means of usefulness. We are now extending
across the entire continent what I cannot help regarding as the
anti-Christian practice of non-religious popular education. We are, I
believe, but smoothing the road to crime in the majority of cases.
Cannot something be done now, while yet the lands of the vast North-West
are at our disposal? Will no courageous legislator raise his voice to
advocate the dedication of a few hundred thousand acres to unselfish
purposes? Have we wiled away the Indian prairies from their aboriginal
owners, to make them little better than a race-course for speculating
gamblers?
Even if the jealousy of rival politicians--each bent upon
self-aggrandizement at the expense of more honourable aims--should
defeat all efforts in behalf of religious endowments through the
Dominion Legislature, cannot the religious associations amongst us
bestir themselves in time? Cannot the necessity for actual settlement be
waived in favour of donations by individuals for Church uses? Cannot the
powerful Pacific Railway Syndicate themselves take up this great duty,
of setting apart certain sections in favour of a Christian ministry?
The signs of the times are dark--dark and fearful. In Europe, by the
confession of many eminent public writers, heathenism is overspreading
the land. In the United States, a community of the sexes is shamelessly
advocated; and there is no single safeguard of public or private order
and morality, that is not openly scoffed at and set at nought.
Oh, men! men! preachers, and dogmatists, and hierarchs of all sects! see
ye not that your strifes and your jealousies are making ye as traitors
in the camp, in the face of the common enemy? See ye not the multitudes
approaching, armed with the fell weapons of secular knowledge--cynicism,
self-esteem, greed, envy, ambition, ill-regulated passions unrestrained!
One symptom of a nobler spirit has shown itself in England, in the
understanding lately suggested, or arrived at, that the missions of any
one Protestant Church in the South Sea Islands shall be entirely
undisturbed by rival missionaries. This is right; and if right in
Polynesia, why not in Great Britain? why not in Canada? Why cultivate
half-a-dozen contentious creeds in every new township or village? Would
it not be more amiable, more humble, more self-denying, more
exemplary--in one word, more like our Master and Saviour--if each
Christian teacher were required to respect the ministrations of his next
neighbour, even though there might be some faint shade of variety in
their theological opinions; provided always that those ministrations
were accredited by some duly constituted branch of the Christian Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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