The
other day the Muser was handed a photographic group of men who made
Presbyterian church history half a century and more ago. In the month of June,
1863, the synod of the Canada Presbyterian church was held in Hamilton, in
which occasion Milne, the photographer, made a fine group picture, in which
every face stands out as clear and fresh as it did in the long ago. There were
giants in those days in the pulpits of not only the Presbyterian church but of
all religious denominations in Canada. The earnest, strong faces of the men in
the group give evidence that they stood on the firing line in the battle
against sin and corruption in high and low places. The only distinguishing
feature in the matter of dress was the white necktie worn by the majority of
the ministers. The Roman collar and priestly waistcoat had not then come into
vogue. The only two faces that the Muser recognizes are those of Dr. Ormiston,
who was the presiding officer of the synod, and Dr. David Inglis, pastor of the
Macnab street Presbyterian church. Anyone who ever saw Dr. Ormiston or his
photograph would never forget his face or the bushy head of hair standing out
like the quills of a porcupine. There was power in that broad face, and there
was gentleness in its sympathetic moments. Not more than half a dozen wore the
full beard and moustache, but very few were smoothly shaven, the large majority
wearing the conventional whiskers of half a century ago. Dr. Inglis wore a
moustache, and the center of his chin was shaven, and on the sides of his face
and around his throat were whiskers. The men of those days wore whiskers as a
protection from throat troubles. This historic picture should be preserved and
reprinted as a memento of the foundations broad and deep of Presbyterianism in
Canada.
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Dr. David Inglis was pastor of the
Macnab street church when it was first opened in 1857, and continued as pastor
till he was called to a professorship of a college in Toronto. From that city
he went to Brooklyn, New York, the pastorate of the Dutch Reformed church, and
a few years later died. In his day he was one of the best preachers in the
Canadian Presbyterian church. One of the pleasant memories of his preaching was
the love of God for the uplift of his congregation: rarely did he touch upon the
subject of awards and punishments, which was the common theme in those days.
The Macnab street church has been fortunate in all the years since it was first
opened in having but three ministers. When Dr. Inglis was called to Toronto,
the Rev. Dr. Fletcher was inducted as the pastor, and till he voluntarily
retired a few years ago, he ably discharged the duties of his sacred office.
Rev. Beverly Ketchen succeeded Dr.
Fletcher, and keeps up the reputation of the old church.
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The Rev. William Ormiston, D. D., will never
be forgotten by the old stagers who knew him as a young man when he first came
to Hamilton, for he engaged in every enterprise that was bettering the moral
forces of the city. The impression seems to be general that he was a native of
Canada; and indeed the Muser knew nothing to the contrary till the other day
when we came across a brief sketch of his life published in the Canadian
Illustrated News, a weekly illustrated paper printed in Hamilton in the early
sixties. The history tells us that he was born at the Castle Hill farm in the
parish of Symington, Lanarkshire, Scotland, on the banks of the Clyde, on the
22nd of April, 1821. His father rented the Castle Hill and the Town
Head farms. To his mother’s naturally vigorous intellect and to her
intelligence acquired by reading and sound judgment , the son was indebted for
much of those qualities which made him remarkable even among remarkable men. When
Mr. Ormiston was in his tenth year his father moved to a farm near Edinburgh,
and there, amid the charming scenes of Allen Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, he
attended school at West Linton and assisted in the labors upon the farm. Amid
the scenes where the persecuted Convenanters sought the refuge they did not
find, whose memory is dearer to Scotsmen than even the charms of Ramsay’s
pastoral poetry, the boy’s mind was trained and tutored in history and popular
traditions by his mother. In 1834 the family emigrated to Canada and settled in
township of Darlington, about thirty miles east of Toronto, and here Mr.
Ormiston spent four years in the work of clearing a timber farm, and in all the
duties of farm life. When others would have rested after a hard day’s work, he
spent his evening hours reading the best class of books and acquiring a
knowledge of arithmetic, mathematics and Latin, so far as books would assist
without a teacher. That was the kind of stuff the boys of sixty and seventy
years ago were made of. There were no evening or technical schools in those
days at which boys could fit themselves for advancement in life, nor was the
average father able to give his boys and girls the education that now can be
had in our public schools without cost, yet we will venture the assertion that
these old-time boys were better fitted for the duties of life than is the
average boy of the present day. While Mr. Ormiston was not disconnected with
his work on the farm, he felt that with an education he could be of more
intellectual use in the world. His ambition was to enter college and prepare
for the ministry, and in this his mother was greatly interested. The father
fell in with the idea, and proposed to sell part of his farm and devote the
proceeds to his son’s education. This the son would not agree to, as he thought
it unfair to the rest of the family. He was determined to work his own way, and
without a sixpence in his pocket he went to the town of Whitby and opened a
subscription school, there being no public schools in those days. He relied
entirely on fees for his living, and he taught the most prosperous school, and
it was attended more largely than any other had been in the neighborhood. While
teaching, he prepared himself for entering college, which he did in 1843, and
took the degree of B. A. in Victoria college, Cobourg in 1847. During his four
years in college, he earned his own way as a tutor, and when he graduated, he
was elected to a professorship in the same college, which position he held for
two years. In 1849, he was ordained to the ministry in connection with the
Canadian branch of the Scottish Presbyterian church, and his first pastoral
charge was a small country church in the township of Clarke. In 1853, he was
appointed mathematical master and lecturer on chemistry and natural philosophy
in the Normal school at Toronto, and while thus employed, he preached
frequently and lectured on temperance and kindred moral subjects in almost
every city and village in Upper Canada. He was a thorough teetotaler, having
been brought up from childhood to believe that strong drink and drunkenness
were the besetting sins of Canada. In those days, church members in all
denominations were inclined to look upon wine and whiskey as necessities of
life.
Where the Savoy theatre now stands, there
used to be an old stone building in use by the United Presbyterian congregation
as a church. Originally, when the congregation met in that building on what is
now the site of the Gurney-Tilden foundry, they were known as the American
Presbyterian church. The Rev. Mr. Hogg was pastor of the church in the early
sixties, and among the leading members were Dr. Calvin McQuesten and John
Fisher, then owners of the foundry that stood on the present site of the Royal
hotel. After Mr. Hogg had accepted a call to a congregation that was more in
harmony with undiluted Presbyterian doctrine, the church was without a pastor
for some time. In 1857, Mr. Ormiston who was then connected with the Normal
school in Toronto in Toronto, received a call to the United Presbyterian church
– and it was an urgent call, for once before he had turn a deaf ear to their
entreaties – and he came to this city, one of the conditions being that a new
building must be erected. From the first Sunday that he preached in the old
stone church, his success was established, for it was not more than a month
till the building was too small to accommodate the scores and hundreds who
wanted to hear the talented young minister. Those were the days of pulpit
oratory, not of the sensational kind for when the services of the day were
ended, the people who heard the gospel had something to think about and study.
The Hamilton pulpits were occupied by men of intellectual power, and the
churches were filled at every service. It was the rule then for families to
attend church; now, according to the late statistics of church attendance, it
is the exception. Within the next year the new church was built on the corner
of Macnab street and Maiden lane, and from the Sunday of its dedication, and
down through the years of Mr. Ormiston’s ministry in it, it was a rare thing to
find a vacant seat in any of the services. Thomas Fotheringham was the sessions
clerk, and William Moir was the treasurer. Dr. Ormiston identified himself with
the order of Sons of Temperance, and with the Good Templars, and his voice was
earnest against the prevailing sin of intemperance. In 1860, the University of
New York conferred on him the honorary degree of doctor of divinity., andin
1862 he took a vacation, and for the first time since he was a lad, visited his
native Scotland. He spent several months in travel, visiting many foreigh
countries. While in London, he preached to such good acceptance that he
received a call to become pastor of the congregation of which the celebrated
Alexander Fletcher was once the minister. One of his biographers wrote of him :
“It is of William Ormiston, the scholar, the practical preacher of the gospel,
the self-reliant man, that I write, not the Scotchman, nor the ministering
member of a church whose distinctive element of ecclesiastical policy is a
somewhat haughty assumption of superiority over Caesar and the things that are
Caesar’s. A minister and a man less dogmatical, more tolerant of others, more
genial and cosmopolitan, or larger in Human sympathies and loftier in thought,
word and action than Dr. William Ormiston, does not breathe, nor utter the
words of eternal life in any land.”
In the proceedings and debates of the general
assembly of the Free church of Scotland, held at Edinburgh, May, 1862, we find
reports of three speeches made by ministers of the Canada Presbyterian church
who were delegates to the assembly. It will afford pleasure to the old-time
admirers of Dr. Ormiston if in this connection we give a few extracts from his
speech before that august body of churchmen. As an old-time Hamiltonian wrote of
the address after reading it : “It is flavored with the blossom of the heather:
but the Englishman, the Irishman, and the fine sons and daughters of blue-eyed
Germany may each take up the chorus of exultation. The love and praise and
veneration for native land are healthful sentiments to cultivate in Canada. The
Scotchman who has lived much in other lands, among other shades of religion, of
society, of patriotism may lose some of his specialty. But even he claims this
for Scotland, that the sanctified charter of the workingman, the day of rest
has been there more carefully guarded from aggression than in any country of
Europe.”
In speaking of the union of Presbyterian
churches, he said : “I feel that I can appear before this assembly with a great
deal more self-respect when I come as a minister of the Canada Presbyterian
church than if I came as a missionary of either the United Presbyterian church,
or the Free Church of Scotland in Canada. We have not only a land of our own,
but a church of our own, too – a church bearing the transcript of all her
honored mother’s perfections, without many, if any, of her wrinkles.
“Our union enables us to economize both men and
means in Canada and that is a great advantage; for we are practical men,
necessarily economical and practical men out yonder. As an illustration,
conceive to yourselves, in some new, sparsely-settled locality, each of the
three Presbyterian churches, endeavoring to uphold a feeble, flickering cause,
mutually jealous of each other, the adherents of each saying : “There’s nae
minister lake oor ain minister, the others not having the proper twang thump or
nod, or other orthodox peculiarity, all displaying quite as much jealous
rivalry as could be called Christian competition.”
If Dr. Ormiston were living in Hamilton in
these days when a union of Presbyterian, Congregational and Methodist churches
is being discussed and voted upon, the probabilities are that he would be in
the front rank as a leader in favor of union – at least to the extent of
reducing the number of rival churches in communities unable to support even one
church generously. In closing his eloquent address before the assembly he said :
“There are many memorials of Scotland in
Canada, and when our children ask us, what mean you by these? Will they not be
lovingly and earnestly told. Looking back gratefully upon the past, deeply
conscious of the responsibilities of the present, and casting a hopeful, believing
eye towards the future, with a loving heart and free, I go back to you, fair
land, where we have a truly free church in a free land, where a man is placed
in circumstances the most favorable of becoming the noblest thing beneath the
sun – a man, in every sense a man. There the children of the poor, equally with
those of the wealthy, share the advantages not only of good, common schools,
but of liberal education; and if nobly endowed as many of them are, since God
knows no class in the distribution of his gifts of mind, a laborer’s son can
leave the university with its highest honors, all as a portion of his
inheritance from his country, for a good education is the Canadian’s birthright”
The closing sentences should be an
inspiration to every Canadian boy and girl to acquire that liberal education
that this great country provides for its children.
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