The Last New Lights: The New Brunswick Free Christian Baptists, 1832 - 1905 (chapter 2)

8/14/2019 The Last New Lights: The New Brunswick Free Christian Baptists, 1832 - 1905 (chapter 2)

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Chapter Two

Barry Moody, in his study of the early history of Acadia College, observed that from the

time of its establishment in 1838, until well into the next century, many maritime Baptistsharboured considerable fear that education would smother piety, that the search for earthlywisdom would divert the pious young man from his search for the real meaning of life. 1These were sentiments firmly rooted in New Light practices and beliefs, particularly thoseof Henry Alline, who had preached without any regard for formal education or training.Within his journal Alline posited the belief that education was not necessary for a preacher,and in fact could be harmful. O the prejudices of education! he wrote. I began to see thatI had all this time been led astray by labouring so much after human learning and wisdom,and had held back from the call of God. To Alline, a preacher needed nothing to qualifyhim but Christ; and that if [he] should have all the wisdom that could ever be obtained bymortals, without having the spirit of Christ with [him], [he] should never have any success

in preaching.2

Alline asked questions such as has Christ not got learning enough? andIs he not able to teach you in half an hour in his school, more than youll be able to obtainin the seats of human learning all your life?3

The shift to an interest in education represented a fundamental change in the character ofthe Baptist denomination, and a major move away from New Light tradition.4 Institutionslike Acadia, and the Baptist seminary founded in Fredericton in 1836, were built not toconserve a way of life, but to be the vehicle by which that life could be changed. Theyexisted not to safeguard a social position, but to advance it.5 The development ofeducational institutions provided a means of training the ministry, which provided anincrease in prestige for the ministers and attracted to the Churchs ranks young men

increasingly interested in professional advancement. It also contributed to the welfare ofthe community rather than the separateness of a particular religious group, marking abreak from the past by drawing the Baptists closer to the life of the broader community.

According to sociologist S.D. Clark, the Baptist denomination became an institutionalsystem of religion, and education provided it with the means of perpetuating itself fromgeneration to generation, and attracting younger people who had not inherited thesectarian loyalties of their parents.

6

Education also provided the denomination with the means to keep up with the age ofprogress and general advancement in which they believed they lived. To prominent Baptistleaders like Rev. Edward Manning in Nova Scotia and Rev. Frederick Miles in NewBrunswick, the dramatic inroads made in the first half of the nineteenth century into themiddle and upper classes of Halifax and Saint John were clear proof of Gods work on themarch.

7Intellectual competence among the ministry was demanded by the expectations of

this important and growing segment of the Church membership, who believed that onlygrowing men could gain and retain the respect of congregations in an increasinglylearned age.

8It was no coincidence that the primary advocate for the establishment of

Acadia College was J. W. Johnston, a prominent Halifax lawyer and Conservative


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politician. Johnston was a leading member of the citys Anglican community until he andothers split with the church in the 1820s over the appointment of a suitable evangelicalminister, and organized the Granvil le Street Baptist Church. That the Halifax Baptist clique

did not represent the views of many rural Baptists on either general education orministerial training did not prevent them from spearheading the drive to achieve both forthe denomination. For years, the Anglican establishment had derided the Baptists for theirlack of learning. By the 1830s the Baptist leadership, energized by the former Anglicans intheir midst, had begun to take steps, through education, to become a denomination thatwould be able to appeal to others than those of their own body. 9 The result was a moresecular orientation to the Nova Scotia Baptist community and a rapidly growing acceptanceof the emerging North Atlantic evangelical consensus that linked material success withspiritual integrity and growth.10

The New Brunswick Baptists had their own Johnston in the form of William Boyd Kinnear,

a prominent lawyer and politician. Like Johnston, Kinnear was an Anglican until 1828when, after inquiring into Baptist teaching through his acquaintance with some of thecharter members of the Granville Street Baptist Church, he was immersed while on a visitto Halifax

11. He became the leading advocate of the establishment of the Fredericton

Baptist Seminary, which he believed to be crucial in the development and progress of thedenomination both at home and, given the growing interest of the Baptist leaders in foreignmission work, abroad.

12Kinnears most important ally among the Baptist ministers in the

promotion of increased education for the New Brunswick Baptists was Rev. Frederick W.Miles, who had begun his career with a pastorate in Saint John and then moved toFredericton in the early 1830s. As was the case with Kinnear and Johnston, Miles camefrom an Anglican family. He had also attended Kings College in Windsor, and received

theological training in the late 1820s. These men were not representative of the socialstatus of the vast majority of New Brunswick Baptists, but they did represent what manyBaptists, particularly the young, aspired to achieve.

The Methodists also began to seriously consider establishing a denominational secondaryschool in the early 1830s, a process which led to the founding of the Sackville Wesleyan

Academy after Charles H. Allison of Sackville. Allison, another former Anglican and now aninfluential Methodist, offered in 1839 to provide means for the establishment of a schoolthat would be truly Christian and Methodistical, where Pure Religion is not only taughtbut Constantly brought before the Youthful mind.

13As with the Baptist leadership, this

reflected the belief that in secondary schools and colleges in which the functional colonial

elites, including ministers, of a modern society would be trained, the denomination itselfshould assume responsibility for the training, with the assistance and cooperation of thestate.

14They were determined to provide opportunities for young Baptists and Methodists

who would not otherwise have had even the rudiments of higher education. However, aswith the Baptist membership, not all Methodists were convinced that education and pietycould co-exist, particularly where preachers were concerned.


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The divisions that the issue of ministerial training and education created were observedand recorded by a British visitor to New Brunswick. While attending a Baptist generalmeeting in the early 1840s, Frances Beaven watched as these issues were fiercely

debated. [The] present subject, she observed, was the appropriation of certain funds -whether they should be applied towards increasing their seminary, so as to fit it for theproper education of ministers for their churches, or whether they should be applied tosome other purpose, and their priesthood still be allowed to spring uncultured from themass. The opposition to funding the seminary, Beavan recalled, came from some white-headed leaders of the sect, old refugees, who had left the bounds of civilization beforethey had received any education, and who sternly declaimed against the educationsystem, declaring that grace [alone] was what formed the teacher. By the 1840s, however,those in favour held the upper hand, as the old men, stern in their prejudices as their zeal,were conquered, and the baptists have now well conducted establishments of learningthroughout the province.

15With the establishment of Acadia College, the Fredericton

Seminary, and Mount Allison, along with the creation of numerous Sabbath Schools, theBaptist and Methodist leadership, despite lingering doubters within, were firmly committedto secondary education and ministerial training by 1850.

As was shown in Chapter One, the Free Christian Baptists, of all the major Protestantdenominations in mid-century New Brunswick, were the last to accept the values andchanges of mainstream Victorian evangelicalism. It is therefore not surprising to find thatby 1850 the issue of education, whether for preachers specifically or the young in general,had not been considered to any meaningful extent. In the rural areas that comprised theheartland of the denomination there was little agitation for regular schooling prior to the1850s, as fathers felt their sons would learn far more valuable skills - and provide free

labour - working on the farm that they would one day inherit. Most of them believed in thenecessity of learning how to read or write, as these were skills which they knew wereimportant for running a farm and conducting business, and for being able to understandGods word as written in the Bible, which was imperative in order for a Christian toparticipate as an equal in the affairs of the Church.

Sabbath schools were the first real attempt to provide a basic knowledge of reading andwriting to their children. To the Elders they were primarily instruments for the promotion oftheir brand of Christianity and the indoctrination of a second generation of potentialconverts in the basic principles and practices of the denomination.

16To the parishioners,

however, they provided more tangible and immediate benefits, namely literacy and self-

improvement within a secure Christian environment. Most important, it was an institutionthat was readily adapted to suit local requirements and tastes. Conditions for acceptanceby rural congregations included the use of home-grown teachers, the maintenance of localautonomy against denominational control, and the integration of the school into the localcommunity.

17Where these conditions were present, Sabbath schools were usually

established and fairly well maintained. Very few parents, however, saw their childrenbecoming doctors or lawyers, or ever leaving the community in which they had been born


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and moving to Saint John or Fredericton to start a business. With such a world view, anyeducation beyond the basics of the Sabbath school was perceived prior to the 1850s as aluxury that could not be afforded.18 The fact that education was primarily reserved for the

colonial elite, namely Anglicans, made it seem like an even more unattainable, andunnecessary, goal.

The educational standards, as a result, were lamentably low, and the system poorlyorganized and haphazard outside of the urban areas. The experience of John Foster isillustrative of the problems confronted by parents in Carleton County who wished to secureeven the rudiments of an education for their children in the 1840s and 1850s. Foster wasa farmer in Wakefield and a keen member of the Free Christian Baptist church there. Hehad very limited education himself, but he did read the Bible regularly - it was the onlybook in the house - and on occasion wrote poetry. His son George, born in 1847, waspressed into service on the farm at the young age of eight, but Foster was also determined

that his son should enjoy as good an education as he could afford. Young George wouldattend school whenever it was in session in his community, and was sent to neighbouringsettlements and boarded out when it was not.19 The type of education that Fosters sonreceived, however, was mediocre at best. One learned by rote almost exclusively,George Foster later recalled, and studied certain lessons aloud in school hours withcompetition and intolerable din and noise. The quality of the teachers, who wereunderpaid and usually untrained, was also poor. In George Fosters case, not more thanhalf of [them] could take one further than the compound rules of arithmetic and reduction -to whom fractions were terra incognita.20

The reasons for the poor quality of schooling in Wakefield were clear to Foster, who wrote:

Subsidiary aid there was little. Libraries there were none; books were arare commodity; there was only an occasional weekly paper, and nowand then a stray lecture, with the Sunday school and church serviceintermittent. Under such circumstances, from seven years of age tofifteen, my educational privileges were scanty, and the fruitage notabundant.21

Although the government provided aid to teachers who had been employed to teach inparish schools under the authority of local school trustees, it was [a] rate of remunerationnot well calculated to attract competent persons, and the result was very unsatisfactory.

22

The teachers had a mere smattering of learning [and] were very incompetent instructors.They often lodged with the parents of the pupils, living at each house in proportion to thenumber of scholars sent. When books were available, there was no uniformity to thoseprescribed, and there was no standardized testing. This system, wrote historian JamesHannay, raised [the teacher] but one degree above the condition of paupers, was notconducive to their comfort or self-respect.

23Thus, even though like John Foster wanted to

secure a decent education for his son, the opportunities and facilities for doing so were


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lacking.

By the 1850s the evangelical reform movement, as a result of this substandard education

system, and as part of its overall attack on the privileges of the Anglican elite, was taking amuch more active interest in the colonial education system at the parish school level.Lemuel Wilmot, one of New Brunswicks leading Methodist legislators, speaking at theopening of the first provincial exhibition in 1852, put forward the case for a common-schoolsystem that would ensure that all children would have the benefit of a basic minimumeducation. It is unpardonable, he told the crowd, that any child should grow up in ourcountry without the benefit of, at least, a common-school education. It is the right of thechild [and] the duty not only of the parent but of the people; the property of the countryshould educate the country. In a resounding critique of the privilege of the urban colonialelite, Wilmot said, I want the children of the poor in the remote settlements to receive theadvantages now almost confined to their more fortunate brethren and sisters of the towns.

Linking the cause of religious equality with educational equality, he stated:

I know full well that God has practised no partiality in the distribution ofthe noblest of his gifts - the intellect; I know that in many a retiredhamlet of our province - amid many a scene of painful poverty and toil -there may be found young minds ardent and ingenious and as worthyof cultivation as those of the pampered children of our cities. It isgreatly important to the advancement of our country that these shouldbe instructed.

All, he concluded, are interested in the diffusion of that intelligence which conserves the

peace and promotes the well-being of society.24

Even people with little regard for education in general could be interested in its promotionwhen the question of religious equality was involved. A desire to achieve equality with the

Anglican elite was not the only motivating factor, however. As Baptist and Methodistleaders pressed for a common-schools system, they endeavoured to ensure its Christiancharacter, and they also fought against any compromise that would allow RomanCatholics to have separate schools. As with most other components of the evangelicalreform agenda, McLeod and the other key Free Christian Baptist reformers realized in theearly 1850s that to not support and encourage a broad, pro-education program, would beto surrender any hope of securing a place of importance for their denomination within the

broader evangelical culture of Victorian New Brunswick. They saw the common-schoolsdebate, rooted in the struggle for religious and social equality with Anglicans, andpossessed of anti-Catholic overtones, as the perfect vehicle for enlisting support forgreater education, including the more contentious issue of an educated clergy, amongrural Free Christian Baptists like John Foster.

In 1855 the Conference appointed three Elders- McLeod and Joseph Noble, both


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reformers, and Charles McMullin, one of the founders of the denomination in 1832 and acommitted populist - to a committee to study the issue of education and report theirfindings. Their report found that The education of a child consists in more than the mere

development of its physical and intellectual powers - it embraces also educated moralsense. The committee was careful to link education to Christian moral reform. Theywarned that Intellectual education may be acquired without the formation of moralprinciples, a reflection of the traditional suspicion towards education felt by many in thedenomination. In order to ensure that this was not the case, it was the duty of all goodChristians to ensure that the Bible is the foundation of all correct education. Therecommendations of the committee summed up the goals of both the reformers and thetraditionalists. They urged the Conference to appoint another committee to ascertainduring the ensuing year, as far as possible, the educational wants of our denomination - toenquire into the best mode of giving our children and the children of others a soundreligious education. This language stressed the religious aspect of education, and

appeared to demonstrate a cautious approach. The inquiry was to be done in such a way,however, as to promote our influence and usefulness in the world, and to enable thechildren of Free Christian Baptists to become valuable members of society, and to fill, ifrequired, honourable offices in the world. The committee was telling the denomination thateducation was no longer inaccessible to them. It also hinted at the reformers belief that inorder to advance both as individuals and as a denomination, education was necessary.The new committee on education was comprised of Noble and McLeod, but McMullin wasreplaced by Benjamin Boal, a layperson who was attending his first Conference. Hisinclusion meant that the reformers were now firmly in control of the direction thecommittees recommendations would take.

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The report of this new committee on education was delivered at the 1856 annualConference meeting. It was the first real opportunity for McLeod and the reformers tocompletely outline their beliefs on education to the denomination. The report began bystating that the committee considered the educational wants of the denomination to bevery great, a situation for which they identified two primary causes:

...first, the value of a sound and useful education has not been clearlyunderstood by our people, and hence it has not been appreciated as itshould have been. Second, the facilities for education have been soexceedingly limited that when any did wish to advance beyond theordinary bounds, it was exceedingly difficult for them to do so, and

hence the limited opportunities rendered education more limited andless sought after.

After detailing these two causes, however, the committee paused to mention another. Weshould not, the committee wrote, omit noticing another cause which has had its effect,and that is, the idea that education was detrimental to piety. Here was a direct recognitionof the traditional New Light suspicion that education and knowledge promoted pride and


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destroyed humility. The reformers immediately attacked this proposition. They observedthat this is a great error, inasmuch as a sound religious education is one of the greatestblessings on earth, without which there can be no real moral or social elevation. The

phrase religious education was standard for progressive reformers throughout BritishNorth America. They hoped to expand the place of religion in the classroom by removingspecial privileges and creating a school system that would fearlessly sustain theProtestant character of our nationality and our institutions. Rather than undermining piety,they argued, education would be used to nurture and expand the influence ofChristianity.26

The first recommendation made by the committee was the establishment of an effectivecommon school system. They expressed concern, however, that due care may not betaken to insure the use of the Bible in all our common schools. There was no doubt in theminds of the reformers that, as a Protestant nation, so deeply indebted to that precious

book, there had to be provision for its use in the classroom. In every place of instructionwhich draws a stipend, or occasional grant, from the public funds, the committee wrote,we ought to provide for, and insist on its use. There would be no separate schools forCatholics, as there could be no question of the Protestant character of a common schoolssystem. These were views that were certain to be greeted with enthusiasm by the anti-Catholic, Orange-ist element of the denomination. For those who were worried about thegrowth of secularism in society but recognized, like John Foster, the need for their childrento receive an education, this stern defence of the importance of instilling an unshakeablereligious code in the minds of youth by linking education to Protestant belief wasequally welcome and re-assuring.

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To those who were still leery of education, however, the committee had a differentmessage, structured to appeal to their common sense. The reformers recognized that thenature of work had begun to undergo a major transformation, from the pre-industrialsociety of self-employed artisans, farmers and merchants, to the modern situation inwhich larger factories, businesses and bureaucratic organizations had started to employthe majority of the work force. In the pre-industrial society, sons had followed theoccupations of their fathers, and each small community was perceived as a relativelystructured hierarchy of ranks and orders, based on the local structure of occupations. Thissocietal order, the reformers realized, was breaking down. Signs of the shift from pre-industrial to industrial society were found everywhere -in the building of railroads andtelegraph systems, the growth of urban populations, the large lumber camps and mills. For

the present generation, the old patterns might endure, but for the young, the only futurewas uncertainty. It was this problem that the reformers believed education would solve.

28

Our sons, wrote the committee, must be prepared to fill positions of trust, honor, andemolument, or submit to be hewers of wood, and drawers of water.29 The young men ofthe denomination, the committee warned, were calling upon the leadership for educationalfacilities. Shall we open up to them the highway of eminence, asked the committee, orshall we bind on them the yoke of ignorance, or, what is perhaps more likely, thrust them


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out from us to seek elsewhere what we refuse to provide for them, and thus deprive ourchurches of their best and most valuable members?

30

However good a common school system might be, however, to the reformers it onlyprovided for an ordinary and common education, comprising only the first branches ofknowledge. In order to be prepared for the more elevated and usefull [sic] stations in life,the committee wrote, an education superior to that obtained in these schools isnecessary. If the denomination were to keep its best and brightest young men, theyconcluded, it must have under its controul [sic] educational establishments to meet thewants of its youth, while preparing them for usefullness [sic] in secular callings. The timehad fully come, determined the committee, when the Free Christian Baptists had to takeaction. They recommended that measures be immediately taken to get into operation assoon as possible an educational establishment, under our own influence and control [sic],in which the higher branches of knowledge shall be taught.

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With this recommendation, McLeod and the reformers had gone beyond simple agitationfor common school reform. They were now talking about starting a denominational school,similar to the Fredericton Baptist Seminary or the Sackville Academy Here they wereentering upon more uncertain ground. Most members of the denomination could see that acommon schools system of some sort was going to be implemented by the governmentsooner or later, and supported efforts to ensure that it retained a Protestant outlook andthat the education taught was based on Christian principles. Schools, they hoped, wouldalso provide a way to meet what was seen as the growing social crisis of non-institutionalized youth, by taking them off the streets and away from secular influences andteaching them to respect the existing structure of society.

32A Church operated and funded

institution of higher learning, however, was a different proposition altogether. The reportwas received by the Conference, which then passed a motion that asked McLeod to bringthe subject of education before the denomination more fully through the ReligiousIntelligencer, and endeavour to increase interest on the subject. A committee, comprisedof McLeod, fellow reformers Noble, Deacons Daniel Clark and Leonard Slipp, all from theFifth District, and Hartt, was also struck to ascertain as nearly as possible the views andwishes of our people generally on this subject.33

On the issue of education, as with the cause of moral reform, McLeod found that FreeChristian Baptists were willing to support broad interdenominational initiatives such ascommon school reform, but were far less willing to accept changes that affected their own

denomination, such as the necessity of an educated ministry, or the need for adenominational academy. Changing society was one thing; changing the Church wasanother. The editorials of the Religious Intelligencer in the two years following thecommittees 1856 report clearly indicate the backing the reformers felt they had on theformer issue, and the opposition they were encountering on the latter. For example,McLeod felt no need to extol the virtues of the common school system in his editorials.Instead, he sensed that he was secure enough in denominational support to concentrate


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on how the system should be implemented, particularly the question of whether or not theBible was to be used in the schools.

The Public School Bill introduced by Tilley in 1858 ignited a storm of controversy betweenCatholics and Protestants throughout New Brunswick. The following amendment wasinserted into a bill which was otherwise not contentious:

The Board of Education shall by Regulation secure to all childrenwhose parents or guardians do not object to it, the reading of the Biblein Parish Schools.

34

A further amendment was passed which allowed Roman Catholic children, if required bytheir parents, to read the Douay, or Catholic, version, without note or comment.

35As Carl

Wallace has observed in his biography of Tilley, there are few more controversial issues in

New Brunswick history than the implications of the Douay amendment.36

McLeod lobbiedagainst the bill from the moment the amendment was passed. In a scathing editorial on 12March, 1858, he wrote that the bill threw contempt on the Sacred Scriptures by providingthat the Protestant Bible may be in the school libraries instead of mandating that it shallbe there. McLeod then attacked the Catholics, always a popular stance with thetraditionalist elements of the denomination. Romanists object to the Bible, he wrote, andall books of Protestant tendency, and will not allow their children to be instructed fromthem. Despite widespread Protestant opposition, the two Bibles stayed, even thoughTilley maintained that if the amendment had not been approved, the result would beseparate schools, which would have been even worse.

37

While the reformers position on the common schools question, and their anti-Catholicrhetoric in particular, was popular with the traditionalists, McLeod and the other reformerson the committee appointed in 1856 to canvass opinion amongst the congregationsconcerning the question of a denominational school and ministerial education met withsignificant opposition. The issue was not discussed at the 1857 Conference, and byJanuary 1858 McLeod felt obliged to print a strong editorial designed to answer thesentiment against ministerial education and training that he had encountered. Is learningnecessary? he asked. I have no doubt that many honestly suppose not only that learningis unnecessary but actually injurious and wrong, he wrote. He warned that those who heldsuch views were fighting against God, who:

... calls [men] to preach the gospel. He expects them to Study toimprove their minds, multiply their resources, and make the most ofthemselves, and thereby to show themselves approved unto God...Though author of all things, God chooses to furnish the raw materialsand leave man to modify them according to his taste andcircumstances...we... assert that the man called to preach must labor -must learn to preach.


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Then, in a direct repudiation of New Light belief, he wrote that until we have evidence that[the minister], as a privileged person, may obtain it by miracle or intuition, we must believe

that he can obtain it only in the ordinary way - by study and observation. Not only must theheart be cultivated, McLeod advised his fellow Free Christian Baptists, but a minister mustcultivate the intellect as well. Education was the hand-maid of religion, he wrote, and theministry have no right to dispise [sic] it. In conclusion, he asked, shall infidelity and errorhave all the advantage, and triumph over truth, merely because we will not bring to our aidso important an instrumentality.38

McLeod sought to replace what he saw as false and pretentious claims to authority withnew criteria rooted in skill, training and expertise. From this editorial, however, it is clearthat here, unlike the common schools question, the traditionalist Elders, such as Hartt,Orser, and Pennington, had voiced considerable opposition, in principle, to the reformers

views on ministerial education. These were men who firmly believed that Gods will was tobe found in the very revelations which McLeod dismissed as intuition, and they continuedto enjoy widespread support for these beliefs in the rural areas. They worried that aminister who diverted his attention away from preaching and towards formal educationwould become so stiff, cold and dead that their usefulness is destroyed

39

Despite these concerns, however, the annual Conference meeting of 1858 convened acommittee on Education which presented substantial recommendations on the question ofan educational institution for the denomination. The committee included reformers, likeElders Edward Weyman and George A. Hartley, and two of the most conservativetraditionalists, Orser and Pennington. Remarkably, these men all agreed that the

Conference should accept an ambitious proposal put forward by William Peters toestablish an educational institution in Saint John connected to the denomination, on thecondition that the denomination would not be subject to any financial liabilities. The planwas to obtain a provincial grant to defray the costs of setting up and operating the school,while the Conference would appoint an Educational Conference Committee to look afterthe religious instruction of the school.

40The fact that the committee, with its diverse

membership, endorsed this proposal, was an indication of the influence the reformers hadgained throughout the 1850s. As with his support for the Intelligencer in 1853, Orsersagreement on the proposal was quite likely won in no small part because of McLeodsvehement anti-Catholicism on the common schools question, as well as the fact thatMcLeod had not yet gone so far as to advocate the complete professionalization of the

ministry. There is little doubt, however, that this was his ultimate goal.

The drive by various disciplines - medicine, law, religion - to professionalize in the mid andlate nineteenth century has inspired a number of explanations among historians and socialscientists as to the motivation behind, and the effects of, this broad re-structuring ofsociety. Some have seen the process as an impulse of cultural reform which replacedfalse and pretentious claims to authority with new standards of plausibility rooted in


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investigation and the accumulation of expertise.41

Others regard professionalization as amovement by these groups to secure their dominance in a highly competitive market placeby restricting entrance into the profession and monopolizing a body of specialized

knowledge.

42

Another group has argued that professionalization transformed society fromwithin, and replaced the hierarchical class system with a more open and accessible systembased upon professional career hierarchies.43This view has in turn been challenged byhistorians who claim that professionalization did not supplant class relationships withinmodern society, but instead simply redefined the form that those relationships would take,and buttressed the hegemony of the ruling order.44 What all are agreed upon, however, isthat the process of professionalization was well under way by mid century.

There are five key characteristics that mark the process of professionalization. The first isa basis of systematic theory, such as a doctrine of belief and practice. The secondcharacteristic is the development of a specialized authority recognized by the clientele.

This involves extensive indoctrination and education in the systematic theory and impartsto the professional a type of knowledge that highlights his knowledge and importance.This is followed by the third characteristic, broader community sanction and approval of theprofessionals authority. The professional group must also have a code of ethics toregulate the profession. It must be explicit, binding, and systematic, and is designed toremove injurious internal competition for clients. Finally, a professional culture isdeveloped and sustained through a network of formal and informal groups andassociations. The formal ones include organizations through which the professionperforms its services, organizations which function to replenish the professions supply oftalent and expand its fund of knowledge, and those which promote the groups aims andinterests. The informal associations are small, closely knit clusters of colleagues joined

together by common interests such as specialties within the profession, ideologicalagreement, family ties, or residency.

By 1858 the Free Christian Baptist reformers had succeeded in establishing a number ofthese criteria. The adoption of a Treatise of Faith and standardized Church Covenants allrepresented the beginnings of a systematic theology. Broader community sanction of thedenominations ministers had been achieved with the amendment of the law in 1849 toallow Free Christian Baptist ministers to perform marriages. The incorporation of thedenomination in 1854 had also been a major step forward in this regard. A professionalculture - both formal and informal - had been established, first with the creation of theGeneral Conference itself, and then more specifically with the creation of a separate

Elders Conference composed of ordained Elders and licentiates in 1855. The EldersConference was given control over the discipline of its members, charged with promotingharmony in doctrine and practice, and given the authority to investigate the moralcharacter of its members and adjudicate disputes between them.45 This was also tied inwith the requirement to have a code of ethics regulating the profession, a characteristic atleast partly satisfied with the adoption of a denominational Constitution and Rules for theGeneral Conference and District Meetings.The fact that Hartt was the first Moderator of the


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Elders Conference, and McLeod its first Secretary, indicates the early success of thereformers in establishing elements of the organizational end of their reform agenda.

Two crucial components of professionalization were still missing, however. Thedenomination lacked an educational institution to train ministers, and thus buttress theirposition of importance vis-a-vis the layperson, and the Conference had not yet agreed to aCircuit system, which meant that the competition among ministers for clients continuedlargely unregulated. Just as it appeared that the reformers were taking major stridesforward in rectifying this situation, however, the financial crisis of 1858-59 hit theConference. The education proposals of 1858 quickly foundered. A school located in SaintJohn, on the intitiative of William Peters, and most likely to be under the control of thereformers, was an idea that proved impossible to implement in the wake of the revelationsof financial mismanagement and the damage suffered to the reputations and credibility ofthe reformers, Peters in particular.

The plan for a circuit system that the reformers presented in 1859, with its call for theConference to appoint the salaries of every minister, also suffered from bad timing. Theplans requirement that every minister collect money from his circuit as mandated by theConference was widely criticized. The reformers, it was believed, were trying to turn theElders into little more than tax collectors. Worse, the plan contained a provision that everyminister who comes to Conference minus the amount required of them of his circuit shalllose it out of his salary.

46The populist ministers like Orser, Hartt, and Pennington, saw in

this plan nothing less than the subsidization of the less popular, weaker ministers in theConference. No matter how much they might be given by their congregations for goodpreaching, any amount in excess of the salary appointed by the Conference would have to

be turned over to the Treasurer, to pay ministers who fell short. Preachers, they countered,were no longer to be paid on the basis of merit, a change intolerable to both many Eldersand their congregations. For them, professionalization had gone far enough. To do anymore would be to change completely the nature of the ministry, which traditionalists likeHartt would not accept. Thus, even though the reformers managed to get the circuit systemaccepted in 1860 after a contentious debate, it was neither as ambitious nor as successfulas they had hoped, and it was discontinued in 1861 in the face of churches and Elderswho simply ignored it.

47

Exacerbating their problems was the fact that, despite having made some headway inlowering the debt, the Conference remained on shaky financial ground. These financial

difficulties continued to hamper the work of the reformers, and led to dissension amongstthe leaders.

48A rift developed between Peters and Underhill, who had taken the brunt of

the blame for the financial crisis of the late 1850s, and McLeod. Part of the problem mayhave been McLeods transfer to a pastorate in Fredericton in 1858, at the height of thefinancial crisis. In 1861 a committee was appointed by the Conference to visit the Churchin Saint John and investigate and decide upon matters of difficulty between Brethren E.McLeod, B. J. Underhill, and Wm. Peters. The committee, headed by Merritt, met with the


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church and reported back that it had effected peace between Brethren McLeod andUnderhill, and that matters between Peters and McLeod had been left for them to talkover and settle between themselves.49 Evidence exists, however, that the differences

between the three of them were never completely reconciled.

50

Another problem which confronted the reformers was the rapidly diminishing role of thelayperson in the affairs of the denomination and the worship service. The creation ofbureaucratic organizations within the Conference, such as the Sabbath School,temperance work, and in 1864 both a Foreign Missionary Society and a Home MissionarySociety, showed that there remained broad support for moral and social reform, and forengaging in trans-denominational ventures. While the first officers of the Home MissionarySociety were almost all reformers - Underhill was the President, Elders McLeod and

Alexander Taylor were Vice Presidents, Daniel Clark was the Treasurer, Elder G.A. Hartleywas the Corresponding Secretary, and Peters was the Recording Secretary - Samuel Hartt

was elected the first President of the Foreign Missionary Society, and other traditionalistsheld key positions.

51Most important for the reformers, however, was the opportunity these

organizations provided for laypersons to participate in aspects of the Churchs mission,even as their traditional role in the worship service was disappearing, and their power overChurch government was being subverted.

Women in particular, to whom the worship service had long been an important outlet forself-expression, were encouraged to divert their attention and energy to these newsocieties. While no women were on the original executives of the two Missionary Societies,they were active annual members and contributors, one - Mary Ann Hartt of Oromocto -was named a Life Member of the Foreign Missionary Society at the first annual meeting,

highlighting the important role that women would play in the moral reform movement,especially missionary work, in the following years.

52

For his part, Mcleod continued to champion various reform causes in the ReligiousIntelligencer, speaking out on issues such as debtors being sent to prison.

53The

organizational reform of the denomination remained his primary focus, however. Hecontinued to challenge traditional New Light beliefs on education and religious experience,and warned that:

Wherever the idea prevails, that the first experience is the purest andhighest type of Christian life; that progress in intellectual knowledge

endangers piety; that the safest rule of action is impressions andfeelings; and that that only is gospel which stirs the emotions, thesaddest consequences are sure to follow.

54

He decried the practice of impulses, occasions, sympathies and excitements55

stilladhered to by many Elders and congregations, and extolled instead the virtues ofpractical knowledge.56The discipline of letters, he wrote, in combination with the


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discipline of life, is of great utility [and] its neglect would be to recede from civilisation tobarbarism.

57He lamented the fact that to many in the denomination a meeting without a

good share of excitement is no meeting at all, and that the plainest and most searching

truths of the gospel forcibly, but calmly presented, give[s] no food to their souls.

58

ForMcLeod, only those feelings that were consistent with reason came from God. While he didnot rule out sudden and dramatic conversions, they were far less important to him than thegradual conversion and Christian growth that had become the standard for mid-Victorianevangelicals.

59

He persisted in his belief that education and the adoption of a systematic ministry werenecessities for the denominations continued success, and came close to suggesting thatthose who opposed these positions were lazy, shallow and insufficiently self-disciplined toaccept them.

60Elder George A. Hartley, pastor of the church in the Carleton district of

Saint John, a key reform ally of McLeod, and his successor as Corresponding Secretary of

the Conference, reported to the annual Conference meeting in 1862 that one cause ofweakness with many of our churches is a want of proper gospel labour and discipline. Thereformers were aware that many churches managed to do without regular ministerialoversight, which undermined the clergys claim to a specialized authority. Hartley madenote of this state of affairs, and charged that while these churches could sustain theirregular meetings and preserve their visibility without ministerial labour, yet do we believethey need the labours of those whom God has called to preach the Gospel, that they mayprosper. He also accused traditionalist Elders of neglecting their duties. Judging by thecourse pursued by a number of them, he concluded, it is to be feared that some of Eldersare becoming indifferent to the wants of our churches as well as to their high and holycalling. Hartley faulted his fellow Elders for covetousness [and] worldly-mindedness, the

result of their refusal to disengage themselves from secular affairs.

In a veiled critique of traditionalist opposition to the organizational part of the reformersagenda, Hartley told his fellow Elders that it was extremely important that ministers, ratherthan criticizing others, should nourish and strengthen the union that now exists amongstus.

61Well aware, however, that complete unity was unlikely on contentious issues such as

education, the reformers then successfully pushed a resolution through that replaced thelong-standing requirement for a unanimous vote in all Conference, District, or churchmeetings. All that was now needed was a four-fifths vote. The reformers hoped that thischange would make it easier for them to get the most controversial parts of their agenda -education and a circuit system - passed, and would make it impossible for one or two

traditionalist Elders to veto any resolution or proposal.

The difficulties in achieving a consensus on a systematic organization of ministerial labourbecame even more apparent in 1863, however, with the presentation of a report by acommittee composed of two reformers, Hartley and Alexander Taylor, and twotraditionalists, Hartt and Pennington, who were appointed to study the problem. We maybe permitted to say, they wrote, that we have found it very difficult to arrive at anything


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definite at the present time. In a compromise that papered over their differences, theyfound that the circuit system would be the best plan to be adopted, but concluded thatafter consideration [we] have decided not to recommend it this year. Instead, they urged

the churches to voluntarily engage a regular pastor, and recommended that theConference send out one or two missionaries to help those churches who are not able tosecure pastoral labour. The report was adopted unanimously. Although it did notaccomplish anything of substance for the reformers, it was the best that they could dogiven the continued opposition of the traditionalists.

Unhappy at the lack of progress in implementing key parts of their agenda, the reformersbegan to take a more directly confrontational approach. While David Bell is generallycorrect in his conclusion that McLeod never described the enemy by name in theReligious Intelligencer, his assertion that a reading of the Conference minutes gives novery refined sense of the nature or extent of popular resistance is inaccurate.

62In 1864

the reformers moved for the adoption of a Conference Committee to report each year onministers not in attendance at Conference meetings. The committee, composed of McLeodand fellow reformers Edward Weyman and Joseph Noble, delivered a stinging rebukedirected at ministers who refused to attend the annual Conference without good excuse.They referred to the chief offenders by name. Traditionalists such as John MacKenzie,Thomas Conner, Elijah Sisson, and George Orser, were deserving of sharp rebuke, thecommittee concluded, as their absence is calculated to destroy our confidence in theirattachment to the interests and prosperity of our body. These were the men, thecommittee charged, who express dissatisfaction at the doings of the body, and disaffectother brethren by their influence, doing harm to the denomination. In an unprecedentedmove they recommended that the Conference severely censure these brethren.

63In fact,

the absenteeism of these Elders made it easier for the reformers to get elected to the keyleadership positions in the Conference. Nevertheless, their absence provided thereformers, directed by McLeod and Weyman, with an opportunity to launch a well-calculated offensive designed to undermine the influence of key traditionalists by attackingthem publicly for dereliction of duty.

Even the popular Hartt came in for criticism for his part in a long-standing dispute at theSecond Church in Wakefield. In the late 1850s members of that church had becomeembroiled in a property dispute which led to a spirit of dissension within thecongregation.

64Hartt sought to resolve the dispute in the traditional manner, by referring it

to a committee of church members appointed by the District Meeting, but he met with

opposition from parties to the dispute who were unwilling to accept the intervention ofeither Hartt or the committee he proposed. As a result the recommendations of thecommittee were ignored. Hartt then attempted to enforce his own discipline on the churchby circulating a paper which that read, in part:

... all members of this Church... will submit ourselves... one to theother and anything that should occur among us either spiritual or


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temporal matters that affect Disunion among us or burden or want ofConfidence that it should be immediately looked after and any Brotheror Sister that will not submit to them that have the rule over them in the

Lord as we should all have care one for another shall be immediatelyremoved from among us, and all that are among us now that will notsubmit themselves in the same manner we can no longer wlak withthem in fellowship as Church members.

65

The methods that had served Hartt well in the 1830s were, however, no longer effective inthe late 1850s. Some members of the congregation were no longer content to accept themediation of Elders and Deacons in secular disputes. They wanted to separate spiritualmatters from temporal, and to pursue a secular solution to a secular problem by utilizingthe civil judicial system. When they would not submit to Hartts authority and sign hisultimatum, they were removed from the church at Hartts urging.

66

The dismissed members refused to accept their expulsion from the church, however, andeventually, after more than three years of heated dispute, appealed to the GeneralConference for reinstatement. A Conference committee designated to report on the disputeconcluded in 1863 that there had been much improper and unchristianlike behaviour onboth sides of the dispute, and referred to Hartt by name. While we are willing to accord toElder Hartt the intention and aim to labour for the best good of the people, the committeefound, yet we cannot resist the conclusion that he has erred in judgment in actingamongst them, and that some of his actions were illegal [and] uncalled for.67 Theindividuals removed from the church were reinstated, but the hard feelings remained, andultimately led to a split in the congregation and the creation of a second church in the area.

Two things emerged out of the difficulties within the Second Church in Wakefield. The firstwas an obvious personal setback for Hartt.

68More significant, however, was the

confirmation that the episode provided for the reformers belief in the need for a moreprofessional ministry and a more organized and structured Church. The kind of free-lancedisciplinary action and dispute resolution engaged in by Hartt was, to them, a symbol ofeverything that was wrong with the traditionalist method of conducting Church affairs.Instead of solving the problem, Hartt had only made matters worse, and contributed to theinstability of the church.

It was no coincidence that these difficulties for the traditionalists came to a head at the

same time that the reformers were organizing the Missionary Societies to find new outletsfor the energies of the Church members, and when they were intent upon re-opening theeducational issue with the presentation of a major new paper on the question of adenominational school by E.C. Freeze. Freeze, a provincial school inspector, had for anumber of years been active in promoting Sabbath Schools, and had been one of the mostinfluential laypersons pressing for greater denominational interest in education. In hisaddress to the Conference, he called for the creation of an Education Society that would


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prepare a plan for building a denominational school, with a careful estimate of costs.Cognizant of the lingering suspicions of large-scale ventures among the Churchmembership, he was careful to point out that the venture would not proceed until sufficient

funds had been raised through the selling of shares and provincial grants. Experience hasshown, he told the Conference, that to depend upon the credit system to found suchinstitutions, is equivalent to signing their death warrant. The Society was not to beofficially affiliated with the Conference, and the denomination would not be responsible forits financial affairs, nor would it be liable for any of its debts. Freeze estimated that withconcerted effort, a denominational school could be ready to begin operation by 1866.Freeze concluded his presentation by stating that:

I have no faith in ignorance, neither do I suppose those have who arelistening to me. I do not believe it fosters spiritual religion, or ever did,but, on the contrary, it is the mother of error - the handmaid of

superstition and bigotry... If [there] is one subject more than anotherthat should interest us, next to the religion of Christ, that subject isemphatically education.

He asked that all members of the denomination support the plan with good will andhearty cooperation.69

Although the reformers had been trying to stir up interest in, and support for, the cause of adenominational academy for years, their pleas for action had taken on a new degree ofurgency by 1864. The reason was simple - young men were not joining the church in thesame numbers as in the previous generation. The reformers were convinced that if the

Free Baptists of these Provinces do not wish to lose their most promising young men, andhave their best talent absorbed in other bodies, they must make provision for [their]education and training. Education, the reformers saw, was unavoidable. More and more itwas a persons education, and not his inherited rank or even necessarily his occupation,which determined his status. Grave warnings were issued by the leaders of all majordenominations, of the danger of downward mobility and loss of status to those who failedto seek education.70 If the Free Christian Baptists did not make provide training for theiryoung men, they would go elsewhere to get it, where they would be tainted by principles,according to Freeze, differing from those of their parents, if not diametrically opposed.

71

In particular, all of the denominations best young candidates for the ministry, warned thereformers, would soon be preaching in Baptist or Methodist pulpits.

The struggle with the Methodists for the winning of new converts is symbolic of the basisfor the reformers concerns. The Free Christian Baptists were overwhelmingly dwellers inrural areas, while the Methodists were strongest in urban areas. Because of the similaritiesbetween the two denominations both in doctrine and sensibility, there was an intensecompetition. The upper hand, at least in terms of overall numbers, had until the 1850sgone to the Free Christian Baptists, but as people began to move away from their farms


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and into the towns and cities, there was a palpable fear that the balance could shift. Evenin the denominational stronghold of Carleton County, the Methodists by 1871 slightlyoutnumbered the Free Christian Baptists in Woodstock, the county town.72It was believed

that it would be especially difficult to attract converts among immigrants if thedenomination could not offer them an in house opportunity to compete and advance inNew Brunswick society. Simple itinerant preaching and revivalism, effective in the past,was no longer sufficient to attracting new converts.

In the months after the 1864 annual meeting McLeod was cautioned by his brother-in-lawWeyman not to press the issue too quickly. Both were aware that considerable oppositionto education, and the overall plan to professionalize the ministry, remained. McLeodreplied that I will not knowingly do wrong in this matter. He agreed that the subject couldnot be pressed too quickly, but maintained that it must be agitated and talked about.There was a tone of resignation in McLeods writing which indicated his disappointment in

the fact that, despite all of his success and good work over the previous fifteen years, heand the reformers had still not succeeded in overcoming the opposition of thetraditionalists.

There are some, he wrote, who will oppose [education] always - they will opposeanything that I am connected with. Gladly, he told Weyman, would I have stood back andlet somebody else work this up, if they would, but I feel, my dear brother... that I have workto do for my people, and that this Educational matter is part of it. He then turned to thesubject of the proposed Educational Society and reassured Weyman that the Conferencewould not be in any way financially responsible for its activities. He deplored the fact thatsome of our influential brethren who formerly favoured the idea [are] now spreading an

influence against it. Nevertheless, he warned, the traditionalist leaders will injurethemselves if they continued to oppose education. He concluded the letter with a realisticassessment of the changes taking place in society. They are moving and cannot bestopped, he wrote, and he will be crushed who does not move with it. 73

Over the next three years, however, McLeod , seemed to find renewed enthusiasm as hestepped up his efforts on behalf of promoting education and systematic organisation. TheEducational Society was established in 1865, with reformers firmly in control, and McLeodproceeded to editorialize in favour of a circuit system and the need for regular pastoralcare in his editorials in the Religious Intelligencer. He managed to get the Conference toreplace much of the distinctive New Light terminology, such as Elders and meeting

houses, with more modern, generically evangelical appellations, such as Reverend andchurches.

74He also continued to warn against Catholic influence in society, encouraging

people to support Protestants candidates over Catholics in various elections,75

andmaintained a vigorous stance on issues of social and moral reform, such as the necessityfor a more humane asylum system.

76

Two factors provided renewed confidence and greater motivation. The first was the


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optimism he and other reformers felt at the prospect of Confederation. Of all the religiousdenominations in New Brunswick, none was as supportive of Confederation as the FreeChristian Baptists. In part it stemmed from the continued association of the reformers with

Tilley, cemented even further with McLeods move to Fredericton in the early 1860s. BothMcLeod and Hartley filled the pages of the Religious Intelligencer with pro-Confederationarticles and editorials, and kept their readers abreast of developments by publishingextracts from debates and proposals. They believed that Confederation would bring aninflux of money into New Brunswick, and that an inter-colonial railroad would quicken allthe pulses of trade and industry in the country. Agricultural and industrial productionwould rapidly increase, they wrote, and the people of New Brunswick could justlyanticipate a great development of manufacturing energy [and] we shall be able to competefavourably with our American cousins in every foreign market throughout the world. Mostsignificant, union with Ontario, they believed, would vastly improve the common schoolsystem in New Brunswick:

The common school system of Canada West is one of the very best onearth. Connection with that prosperous and rapidly advancing Provincewill soon tell favourably upon our educational enterprises. We shall notlong remain content to lag behind other portions of the Confederacy insuch a vital matter as general education.77

The new country would be a Christian nation led by God fearing men with Christianhearts whose moral character is above suspicion, and who were loyal... lovers ofBritain, her laws, her freedom and her institutions.

78Never, editorialized Hartley, did we

see so bright a day, nor so prosperous a future as at present. The blessing of God, as

far as the reformers were concerned, was clearly upon the new Dominion.79 It was anindication of the divine nature of material progress.

The second reason for renewed effort was the sudden influx of a sizeable group of youngministers and licentiates. The large number of Licentiates which have been recommendedto this Conference by the Churches and District Meetings, McLeod reported in 1866, is apromising feature of our present history.80 To McLeod, this factor was interconnected withthe approach of Confederation. The traditionalists were growing older, he realized, andwhen they passed away it would be these young licentiates who would become theleaders and fathers of the denomination. As the country was to be reborn andstrengthened, so was the denomination. McLeod stressed that the coming age of the

Great British American Confederation would end New Brunswicks isolation and lead toan increase in population, wealth, intelligence, and social improvement. The provincewould become an integral part of an expanding country of opportunity, with a prosperousand educated populace numbering in the millions. He urged the young licentiates andministers to remember that much study, much experience, and a constant and unreservedconsecration to their work would be necessary to maintain the usefulness of thedenomination in such a society.81 It was upon these young men that McLeod was placing


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his hopes for the future progress of the denomination. He was confident that the old wayswhich had caused the reformers so many problems would die out with the passing of theelderly traditionalists.

McLeod identified three characteristics that were essential for young men entering into theministry. First, they needed an amount of common sense sufficient to endow them with adeep sense of sobriety, discretion, and a deep sense of the importance, necessity, andvalue of intellectual and moral culture. Second, they had to have a deep earnest pietyand had to be ready to serve as ministers at any sacrifice. They also had to be free ofselfish ambition [and] personal jealousies. Finally, wrote McLeod, they should be men ofmore than average literary attainment, well read in history and general literature, withminds adapted to study. They must also be, he concluded, men of respectable culture,gentlemanly in their habits and address.

82To McLeod and the reformers, concepts such

as respectability, culture, moral and literary attainment, and common sense had become

as important as piety, the sole traditional requirement for a minister. He noted withapproval that more young men of our denomination are now students at the University ofNew Brunswick and various seminaries and schools throughout the province, where theyare acquitting themselves in their studies with much honor.

83

McLeod took every opportunity to visit and travel with these young men, and he liked whathe saw in them. Of Rev. George McDonald, for example, who had been ordained in 1866and was the pastor of the churches in Upper Gagetown and Oromocto, McLeod wrote:

[He is] our esteemed and worthy young brother... whose piety as achristian, and whose ability as a preacher, have few equals in any

religious body in this province... [he] preached a telling sermon on thenature and power of the Gospel, and the duty of the Church to spreadit...

84

Rev. John Reud, who grew up with McDonald in the Grand Manan area, far away from thetraditionalist stronghold of Carleton County, had also been ordained in 1866. Both hadbeen converted together under Rev. Joshua Barnes, a reform minded minister who hadhimself been converted by McLeod in 1851.

85Even more than McDonald, who had been a

fisherman prior to entering upon his work in the ministry, Reud, a teacher, was the kind ofeducated young man that McLeod believed was finally being attracted to the ministry.

86

McLeods own son, Joseph, had also joined this group of promising young men who hadcome of age in the era of progress, not the frontier wilderness of the traditionalists, andwere thus more ready to embrace and adapt to change. They were men, he believed, whowould devote themselves to the work of the ministry, and become devoted and efficientpastors, not undisciplined evangelists.

87When these factors were taken into consideration,

McLeod wrote, we fail to perceive the wisdom or the truthfulness of the idea that theformer days were better than these.88


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The reformers believed that in this bright future there was still much work to be done. Thetemperance committee at the 1866 annual meeting reported that while there were fewer

drunkards in society, there were growing numbers of moderate drinkers who set badexamples for children, and who invariably came to ruin.89

The report of the committee onthe Sabbath gave the first hint of an awareness of the growing debates over evolution andthe historical criticism of the Bible when they observed that this [is a] day of struggle forthe truth, when men of powerful minds are striving to overturn our holy religion.

90

Everyone, wrote Rev. J.T. Parsons, a younger minister and a reformer, must realize thatwork is the patrimony of the Christian. He reminded the members of the denominationthat this is the toiling season, and urged all men, women, and children to rise to theduties and dignity of our Christian calling and strive to make the world better by ourliving in it. It was, he said, a holy mission.

91Laypersons like George Boyer of Wakefield,

who came to the 1866 annual Conference meeting and donated $1000 for the Conferenceto invest, and then returned the next year with another $1000, were recognized with deepemotions of gratitude and held up to the denomination as exemplars of the goodness of

Almighty God.92

Material prosperity was only a blessing, the reformers reminded thedenomination, when turned to the higher purposes of God.

93

The year 1867 was more of a turning point, however, than the reformers had imagined. InJanuary, Samuel Hartt died after a lingering illness.

94His loss was deeply felt throughout

the denomination, and despite his differences with the reformers, he was still affectionatelyviewed as the father of the denomination. McLeod wrote that however much any mightdiffer from him in sentiment, or in some practical points, none, who were really acquainted

with him, could doubt but he was a sincere lover of the Saviour.95 He had consistentlysupported moral reform efforts, missionary work, and other aspects of the reform agenda,even though he was opposed to greater professionalization of the ministry, and clungtenaciously to the itinerant evangelism that he had employed from the beginning of hiscareer as a preacher.

96

While his methods were not those that the reformers believed were necessary toconsolidate the Churchs position, nobody disputed Hartts abilities as a gatherer and aleader. As Joseph McLeod later noted, Hartt probably did more to mould the religiousbeliefs of the people in the counties along the Saint John River than any other person.

97

Still, the reformers, while they genuinely regretted his passing, could not help but think that

his death marked the end of the era of the traditionalists. Hartts stature and influence hadbeen so widespread that he was capable of acting as a bulwark against change. Othertraditionalists, such as Pennington, Sisson, McMullin Orser, and Ezekiel Sipprell, whilepossessed of strong local followings in Carleton and Victoria Counties, were not seen bythe reformers as influential enough to take Hartts place.

In the kind of symbiotic irony that history often produces, however, the reformers lost their


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own leader two months later when McLeod died at the relatively young age of fifty-four.Three years earlier he had written Weyman that I feel, my dear brother, that I have notlong to live,98 a sign that the pressures of leading the reformer movement, publishing a

paper, and attending to regular pastoral duties had begun to take its toll on him.

99

If theloss of Hartt removed one of the key traditionalist opponents to the education andorganizational aspects of the reformers agenda, McLeods death deprived the reformmovement of its founder and unquestioned leader. The reaction from fellow reformers wasone of palpable dismay. Barnes later recalled that it did appear as though we could notpossibly part with him.100 Hartley mourned the deaths of both Hartt and McLeod in hisannual report as Corresponding Secretary in 1867. Whereas he referred to Hartt asvenerable and highly esteemed and spoke of his work in raising up the denomination,however, his comments with regard to McLeod were more immediate. He was, wroteHartley, vigorous, hard-working, and beloved, and occupied a sphere of wide-spreadusefulness. In his death our entire denominational interests have lost a strong and

devoted workman who, by his superior talents and distinguished consecration, labouredso successfully for the good of the denomination.

101Weyman was worried about what

would happen to the Religious Intelligencer without McLeod to act as editor.102

As with Hartt and the traditionalists, there was nobody with the connections, influence andproven ability that immediately stood out as a ready successor to McLeod as leader of thereform movement. Weyman was a possibility in the short term, but like the remainingtraditionalists he came from the older generation, and at the age of sixty-seven was moresuited to act as an advisor to the younger reformers. There were a number of other seniorministers of McLeods generation who favoured most or all aspects of the reform agenda,such as Joseph Noble, William Kinghorn, Alexander Taylor, and Benjamin Merritt, but they

were best suited by either temperment or circumstance to a supporting role.

A long-term outlook required a younger man. The most likely candidate, on the surface,appeared to be Hartley. He was only thirty-six, had experience with the ReligiousIntelligencer, was located in Saint John, was the son-in-law of long-time reformer DanielClark,

103and had held a number of key positions in the Conference, including

Corresponding Secretary and Moderator. It was McLeods son Joseph, the ambitioustwenty-three year old licentiate from Fredericton to whom the Religious Intelligencer hadbeen left, who emerged, with the support of influential relatives like Weyman, to take hisfathers place as the most vocal and active advocate of reform. He and other youngministers, such as George McDonald, John Reud, Joseph Parsons, Caleb Phillips, and

Hartley, all under forty, were set to fill important roles in the reform movement.

It was a movement that by the time of McLeods death in 1867 placed a high value onsocial and political respectability, and was thoroughly committed to the interdenominationalconsensus of mainstream mid-Victorian evangelicalism. McLeod had sought to redefinethe untempered revivalism of the denominations New Light past into a more moderate andcontrolled style of worship which would appeal to the growing middle class. He moved


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away from the New Light emphasis on sudden, emotional conversion and promoted in itsplace the view that salvation was a gradual process which involved both the emotion andthe intellect. He believed that in order to sustain and cultivate the spiritual growth of the

regenerate individual required a more formalized and structured institutional framework.This necessitated the creation of a professionalised and educated ministry, and theadoption of various moral and social reform agencies to nurture Christian growth. Just asimportant, these agencies would transfer the focus of the laity from emotional participationin the worship service to more respectable activities - like temperance, mission work, andSunday Schools - that would aid in the regeneration of both the individual and society.Through all of this he sought to relate Christianity to the evidence of social and materialprogress he saw all around him, determined to prevent his denomination from beingcrushed by the forces of change.104 Despite his death, McLeods fellow reformers lookedback upon their accomplishments in 1867 with a fair measure of satisfaction, and faced thefuture with confidence and the belief that those elements of their agenda that had not yet

been realized would take firm root in the decade of prosperity that they saw ahead of them.

Waiting in the wings, however, was McLeods old adversary George Orser, who looked tothe young ministers of the Conference and saw not potential reformers, but a new cadre ofevangelists that he could lead in a rebirth of traditional New Light values and practice. Wewant, wrote Hartley in 1867, echoing McLeods hopes, intelligent, pious, educated youngmen who will come to the work [of] the sacred office of the Gospel ministry.

105Orser had a

different type of young man in mind, and a different plan for the future of the denomination,as he set about to win the hearts and souls of the next generation.


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11. Barry Moody, Breadth of Vision, Breadth of Mind: The Baptists and Acadia College, in

G.A. Rawlyk, ed., Canadian Baptists and Christian Higher Education (Montreal: McGill-Queens

University Press, 1988), 10.

2. James Beverley and Barry Moody, eds., The Journal of the Rev. Henry Alline (Hantsport,

Nova Scotia: Lancelot Press, 1982), 73-74.

3. Ibid., 72.

4. Clark, ibid., 252.

5. Moody, ibid., 9.

6. Clark, ibid.

7. Moody, ibid., 14-15.

8. Doreen M. Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture (Beckenham, United Kingdom: Croom Helm

Limited, 1984), 213-214.

9. Christian Messenger, 12 March 1841, 74.

10. Margaret Conrad, An Abiding Conviction of the Paramount Importance of ChristianEducation: Theodore Harding Rand as Educator, 1860-1900" in Wilson, ibid., 156-157.

11. Saunders, ibid., 232

12. Minutes of New Brunswick Baptist Association (1833)

13. C.F. Allison to William Temple, 4 June 1839, Records of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary

Society (incoming), reel 22.

14. Goldwin French, Methodism and Education in the Atlantic Provinces, 1800-1874" in Scobie

and Grant, ibid., 161-162. The Methodist press editorialized, for example, that the real

substantial prosperity of the people mainly depends [on their] intelligence and religious

character, and that education was a necessity to fit its possessors for stations of responsibility

on earth, and for their higher destiny in another world. However, they emphasized that for

education to be effective, it had to be linked to religious and moral principle; The Provincial

Wesleyan, 19 January 1854.

15. Frances Beavan, Life in the Backwoods of New Brunswick (London: George Routledge,

1845), 60-64.


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16. The committee on Sabbath schools at the 1853 General Conference meeting, headed by

McLeod, wrote that the existence of Sabbath schools is identified with the prosperity of the

Churches, that they were important in the great work of early religious training for children,and that in some instances a more healthy religious influence has followed the introduction of

these Schools; Minutes (1853), 6.

17. David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850 (Stanford, California:

Stanford University Press, 1984), 88-89.

18. Lemuel Wilmot, a leading Methodist and one of the first reformers and advocates of

responsible government in the New Brunswick Assembly, supported a bill in 1846 to provide for a

proper training school for the education of teachers. In speaking in favour of the bill in the

legislature, Wilmot concluded that the greatest difficulty which has been encountered to render

the provisions of the bill effective in promoting a better system of education in the parishschools... [is] the apathy of the parents themselves. He told a story of how in one community an

individual had offered to pay for the construction of a school if the community would get out a

frame and provide the boards, which they failed to do. Even when another man offered to provide

the boards if members of the community would go and bring them from a neighbouring mill,

there was no one who felt interest enough in the education of their children to go and bring them

to the spot - and to this day the frame stands, as it did then, a melancholy monument of the

dreadful apathy which is sometimes to be found even in this comparatively intelligent county.

Quoted in James Hannay, Wilmot and Tilley (Toronto: Morang & Company Limited, 1910), 89-

90.

19. An observer of New Brunswick in the 1850s wrote that the practice of sending children toschool at irregular intervals, where for one month they send two or three, for the next month

none, and for the month after, one was widespread. It was, he concluded, a plan as ruinous to

the advancement of the education of the children, as it is unfair to the laws by which it is

regulated, and unjust and prejudicial to the teachers. Whatever time, he continued, parents can

afford to send their children to school, should be continuous and unbroken; for it cannot be

expected that children will learn, unless endowed with miraculous powers, when they are only

allowed to attend school for three, four or five weeks at a time, with an interval of five or six

months of neglect. Alexander Monro, New Brunswick, With a Brief Outline of Nova Scotia and

Prince Edward Island (Halifax:: Richard Nugent, 1855), 250-251.

20. Wallace, ibid. 7-12.

21. Ibid., 10.

22. The rate in 1833 was L20 per annum for male teachers and L10 for female teachers. The rates

increased significantly over the next twenty years, but were still very low. In 1854 the highest

paid male teacher was making L37.10, while the highest paid female made L27.10. The lowest

paid teachers made L22.10 and L17.10, respectively.


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23. Hannay, ibid., 83-85.

24. Quoted in Hannay, ibid., 90-91.

25. Minutes (1855), 8-9.

26. Minutes (1856), 16-17; William Westfall, Two Worlds: The Protestant Culture of Nineteenth-

Century Ontario (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1989), 6-7.

27. Minutes (1856), ibid.

28. Alison Prentice, The School Promoters: Education and Social Class in Mid-Nineteenth

Century Upper Canada (Toronto: McLelland and Stewart, 1977), 88-90.

29. Minutes (1856), 18.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., 17-18.

32. Westfall, 7. The report of the Committee on the Sabbath in 1856 clearly evidenced these

concerns. The violation of the Lords-day by the children of Christian parents, the committee

warned, is an evil of great extent; and of many parents it may be said as it was of Eli, - his sons

made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. Sabbath-breaking and parental disobedience go

hand-in-hand, and are generally the first steps in viciousness and crime. Minutes (1856), 19. The

committee was comprised of two senior Elders, Hartt and McMullin, and other traditionalistElders Ezekiel Sipprell and Robert French. It also included a number of younger licentiates from

rural areas, all future Elders, none of whom were identified with the reformers.

33. Minutes (1856), 18. Slipp was one of the three delegates, along with Clark and William

Peters, from the Fifth District, which included Saint John. This was where the influence of reform

Elders like McLeod and Noble was the most secure. Slipp was certainly sympathetic to the

reformers, having been an early supporter of McLeod and the Religious Intelligencer; Taylor,

Reminiscences of my Early Life and my Religious Experiences, ibid., 19.

34. New Brunswick House of Assembly, Journals (1858), 203

35. Ibid.

36. Carl Murray Wallace, Sir Leonard Tilley: A Political Biography (PhD Thesis, University of

Alberta, 1972), 115.

37. New Brunswick House of Assembly, Debates (22 March, 1858), 64.

38. Religious Intelligencer, 1 January 1858, 2.


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39. Ibid.

40. Minutes (1858), 18.

41. Thomas J. Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science (Urbana, Illinois:

University of Illinois Press, 1977); William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the 19th

Century: From Sects to Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).

42. Ronald Hamowy, Canadian Medicine: A Study in Restricted Entry (Vancouver: Fraser

Institute, 1984)

43. Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880 (London: Routledge,

1989); and Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880 (London:

Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1969).

44. Colin Howell, Medical Professionalization and the Social Transformation of the Maritimes,

1850-1950," Journal of Canadian Studies Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring 1992), 5-20.

45. Minutes (1855), 33.The preamble of the Elders Conference Constitution indicated the

exaltation of the ministerial office and the sentiment in favour of professional organizations.

Whereas, it stated, we believe the agreement of all associations of men is necessary in order to

their efficiency in whatever work they are engaged; and whereas the ministry of the Gospel of

Jesus Christ, viewed in its relation to the eternal interest of mankind, is the most important office

on earth, hence those who engage in the sacred calling should seek every means for their purity

and unite.

46. Minutes (1859), 16.

47. As Elder G.A. Hartley euphemistically put it in his report to the 1861 Conference as

Corresponding Secretary, In some cases the change made by the Circuit Appointments have been

satisfactory, in others it has not been so. Later in his report he was more candid, noting that

Some of our Churches are in a very low state [and] in some, trials exist that threaten sad

consequences. Minutes (1861), 5-7.

48. Ibid., 7. Of the things that burden and impede our progress, wrote Hartley, perhaps none is

more generally felt than our financial embarrassment. This debt has been hanging so long, and so

many appeals have been made to our people, that it seems to be getting more and more dreaded.

49. Minutes (1862), 18.

50. Letter of Joseph McLeod to Edward Weyman, 13 December 1872. I see you have been

informed that I did not call on Bro. Underhill when he was in Fredericton, wrote McLeod, &

further that the reason I did not was because of the old grievance between him and my father. I

have heard it before... McLeod assured Weyman that his not calling on Underhill was accidental,


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and urged him to believe me when I say that I have not harboured a particle of emnity against

Bro. Underhill. Nevertheless, the rumours that continued to have currency seem to indicate that

the problems between Underhill and Ezekiel McLeod were never completely resolved.

51. Charles McMullin was a Vice President, and William Pennington was a member of the

Executive and a life member of the Society.

52. For a more comprehensive study of the role played by women in nineteenth-century

evangelicalism, see Leonard I. Sweet, The Ministers Wife: Her Role in Nineteenth-Century

American Evangelicalism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983).

53. Religious Intelligencer, 6 February 1863. McLeod wrote that it is unchristian, cruel, and

barbarous to drag the poor and honest, but unfortunate husband and father from the household

and family depending upon him for support, and shut him up with bolts and bars in solitude and

idleness, because he is unable to pay a debt he would gladly pay if he could... He has perpetrated

no crime against morals, his misfortune is no guilt, and he needs compassion and sympathy rather

than punishment.

54. Religious Intelligencer, 26 June 1863.


56. Religious Intelligencer, 27 January 1863.

57. Ibid.


59. Westfall, ibid., 76-77.

60. Bell, 68.

61. Minutes (1862), 9-10.

62. Bell, The Allinite Tradition and the New Brunswick Free Christ

The Last New Lights: The New Brunswick Free Christian Baptists, 1832 - 1905 (chapter 2)

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Transcript of The Last New Lights: The New Brunswick Free Christian Baptists, 1832 - 1905 (chapter 2)