The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4)Dent, John Charles
History
The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4)
Dent, John Charles
Canada -- Biography
The church was an asylum for
any who feared God and wrought righteousness, irrespective of any party
whatever. We so planned our work as to be able to devote one week out of
four exclusively to pastoral labour in the town, and to preach there
twice every Sabbath, besides meeting all the former appointments in the
townships east and west bordering on Yonge Street for forty-five or
fifty miles northward to Roach's Point, Lake Simcoe. This prosperous and
agreeable state of things served to reconcile both my dear wife and
myself to the itinerant life, with all the attendant privations and
hardships incident to those times."
In 1826 Mr. Richardson was sent to labour at Fort George and Queenston.
Next year he was admitted into full connection, and ordained a deacon,
along with the late Dr. Anson Green and Egerton Ryerson. Mr. Richardson
was transferred to the River Credit, where he laboured for a year as a
missionary among the Indians. An important crisis in the history of the
Methodist Church in Canada was then at hand. The memorable Conference of
1828 was held at Ernesttown, in the Bay of Quinté district. It was
presided over by Bishop Hedding, and Mr. Richardson was chosen
secretary. It was at this Conference that the decisive step of
separation from the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church
in the United States was taken. Thenceforward the Church in Canada
became an independent Body, with a Bishop and Conference of its own.
"This step," says Mr. Richardson, "was fraught with results, for good or
ill, according as it is viewed by different parties, from their several
standpoints. It was deemed necessary then, by the majority, because of
the political relations of the two countries, and the difficulty
attendant on obtaining our legal right to hold church property, and
solemnize matrimony. Others, viewing the church as catholic, or
universal in her design and character, judged it wrong to limit her
jurisdiction by national or municipal boundaries." Mr. Richardson
subsequently regretted that the scheme of separation had been carried
out. Meanwhile he was appointed, along with the Rev. Joseph Gatchell, to
the Niagara Circuit, a very extensive field of labour, and took up his
abode at what was then the insignificant village of St. Catharines.
There he remained two years, and in 1830 was ordained as an elder by
Bishop Hedding, of the United States--no Bishop having as yet been
selected for the Canadian Church, which, since its separation, had been
presided over by a General Superintendent in the person of the Rev.
William Case. It is unnecessary that we should follow him in his labours
from circuit to circuit. His life was spent in the service of his
Church, and wherever he went he left behind him the impress of a sincere
and zealous man. At the Conference held at York in 1831 he was appointed
presiding elder of the Niagara District. In September, 1832, he became
editor of the _Christian Guardian_, and while holding that position he
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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