I am set down in Montreal. It is an east-end Mission, but among English speaking people, and my congregation for the most part have come directly from England, some from Lancashire mills, some from Somerset, some from London. I am directly following the Conference ex-President, so that there is a little of human honor attached; but more directly I thank God who has so unexpectedly placed me where I may have much usefulness. I have prayed for people, and at last people are all around me. In this east-end division of the city there is a population of thirty thousand, and but two Protestant churches -- Anglican and Methodist. The Anglican clergyman lives but two doors from me, and we form a social circle, exchanging visits in each other's home. We have co-operative talks on how to impregnate the thousands around us with gospel truth. My church is not large, but in spirit it is young, and the various departments of young people's Christian work are in full swing.
One of these departments is open air work preceding the Sunday evening service. The young people who have the English talent for singing conduct this service. I am not sure that they are doing all that they might do; the Church is in among houses on a side street, and standing up on a flight of stairs leading to an elevated auditorium; while it savours of a justifiable regard for the conventional, it also suggests a fear of opposition from non-Protestant forces, if perchance the young people should dismount the steps and stand on the street. I have watched several meetings, and have noted that only the same persons attend each time. We are in French Canadian territory, and on our own property our services may not be molested.
But the soldiers of Christ must be bold; if their cause is right they must be prepared within legal measures to push the battle. At present we are a substitute for a church bell -- merely announcing to our neighbours that it is the time of service. I have therefore resolved and acted; I have paid a visit to the police station, seen the Captain, and announced to him that my company will come out to the street corner and hold Sunday evening service. And the Captain has graciously replied that he would see that we had protection. I have informed my crusaders, and they have received the news with expressions of misgiving, fearing opposition. Such was not the spirit of Gideon. Our protection came, and we have had glorious meetings not once, nor twice only, but through several summer months, and because we were free to go out, new people took on freedom to attend, and come in. It does appear that in the great city, with its many class distinctions, the people must be made to feel that we want them, and this can be done only by going bravely into the open and pleading with them.
I found so many non-church-going people in this district that I saw a necessity for some special and systematic effort to reach them. I therefore made use of the city directory and the postmen, to enable me in securing Anglo-Saxon names and addresses, and supplied with these I went from door to door, over every street, and asked "Where do you go to church?"
The answers in many cases were astonishing. People living within a quarter of a mile of my church did not know of its existence. In one case the householder had been two years on his ground but had been to church nowhere. Scotch and English -- it was all alike. I assured them that I was not seeking to take any from the church they were already attending. It was an arduous piece of work, but it was thorough and gratifying, and the result was that, whereas I began my pastorate with a roll of seventy-five families, the ending of the year found us with a roll of two hundred and fifty families, the church always full, and the Sunday School doubled.
But my enthusiasm again brought me into trouble. Conference authorities were suspicious of the class of people I was getting. Old members of the church thought that I was bringing in new people to crowd the old ones out. And so, when the last morning of the next Conference convened, I found that some one else wanted my position, and I was assigned to a town some miles away, a railroad centre -- possibly with a work to repeat among many non-church-going railroad people.
But at this point a difficulty arose. "I think we shall keep you in the city" said the ex-President. "We want a Secretary for the Lord's Day Alliance, and also a Secretary for the Dominion Temperance Alliance, and you ought to have one of those positions. Word has come to hand that the railroad town refuses to receive you".
Well! How my Heavenly Father has permitted the loosening of my ecclesiastical hands! How my views of church work have been broadened! I wonder what for? How much bigger, I have come to feel, is the cause of Christ in a community than in a church! Unto what are all these changes leading me?
I was seated on the veranda of my house wondering when a Secretaryship would become my lot, and wondering too what work I might do on the next day (the Sabbath), when a message was delivered to me from the District Chairman -- would I conduct service tomorrow at The All People's Mission? I agreed, although I had never been in the locality and knew nothing of what the institution was like.
It is 6.30 p.m. as I reach the designated corner, and find my church. There is no sign of activity about it except for the movement of people passing. None of these people appear to be of my own kind. There are a few French, but for the most part the passers-by look to be European foreigners, and these mostly Jews. The church in which I am expected to conduct some sort of a meeting is at the corner where two streets cross -- on two corners are groceries, and on the third is a "public house", that is a liquor saloon. The church door is not open, and no one appears with a key. There seem to be no people anxious to go inside. I have just one prompting, and I yield to it. Stepping to the kerb of the narrow sidewalk I begin to sing:- "All hail the power of Jesus' name".
This city is four hundred years old, but such an action was never before witnessed in this locality. The crowds come running from four directions and the street-way is soon filled. The police station is over in the next street, and two policemen are despatched post-haste, who coming up begin at once their process of scattering the people.
"It is alright, officers", I said, "I have done this sort of work before. This is just a religious meeting, and you need not fear any trouble". Then as God had blessed me with a good voice, I broke into singing "Jesus keep me near the cross". I followed this hymn with prayer, and it was in the course of this prayer that I realised something of where I was, for as I mentioned our Saviour's name near the beginning of my prayer I heard an uncouth voice say:- "Jesus Christ, hear him."
After the prayer, to make sure that I had heard correctly, I gave a few words of address and again used that Holy Name. Again I heard the same voice and the same exclamation. This time the speaker was standing by my side, and I had the opportunity of observing him. I did not rebuke him; I simply lifted up my soul in thanksgiving for such an opportunity. I proceeded to quote Isaiah 55, and to talk in a running comment. Suddenly a man's hand was uplifted. "Well, what is it, Friend?" "Will you tell us how, when you speakers come down here, and you say 'believe, believe' in a person that is dead, and only dead, and the man has no money, no bread and no work, how is that going to feed him?"
In mind I said "Thank God I've found it at last." From 1886 to 1909 I have been moved and moved, apparently meeting the conveniences of men, and if ever I seemed to settle into the right niche, it was only to be soon moved on. It was in 1886 that I had said to my District Chairman I would like to go down into some big city, into a neglected neighbourhood, and begin at the bottom and work up. Here now seemed to be the place. It was neglected enough and vulgar enough. But it appealed to me, and I felt instantly that I had the qualifications to meet the situation. I recognised in that questioner the presence of a Jew and a Socialist. I did not provoke his antagonism by lecturing him on the Validity of Faith, but I questioned him with that line of argument in mind. "Who was Abraham?" "Why he was the father of us all" "And do you believe anything that is said about him?" "Of course. Why should I not?" "But you were not there and you neither saw nor heard him" "But things have been handed down to us by men that could be relied on".
"We have been told in our papers, this last week, of a drowning accident that took place in our river -- do you think that story was true?" "0f course" "But you were not there were you?" "No, but a man can afford to believe what other men of his own time says is true". "Very good. Now there were many people who agreed in saying that this Man Who died lived again. I suppose that you read Josephus?" "Who is Josephus?" A voice from the interested crowd-- "He is the Jewish historian". With this my interrogator broke away and left us, and my influence with the company was at least saved.
By this time, some one had opened the church door, and we continued our meeting inside. But it was a noisy meeting -- a meeting with young people who thought that the whole thing was a joke. However by the grace of God I maintained control.
One person had been present throughout, whom I did not know, but of whom I afterwards learned. He was a "local preacher", and on the following Monday evening he was present by appointment at a meeting of the Mission Committee of the Methodist churches of the city, and gave a report of the Sunday evening proceedings. A resolution was passed, and the next day I met with the Chairman of the District, who announced my appointment as "Superintendent of All People's Mission", and the salary at the rate of One Thousand Dollars a year. "Then" said he, "There is an additional work that our Mission Board in Toronto desires you to undertake. We want you to meet the steamships during the summer and institute chaplain service among the immigrants arriving from the Old Country, and for this the Board has voted Two Hundred Dollars additional". Clearly I was not to be idle. My duties at the docks began next day.
My first Sunday on duty saw an attempt to form a Sunday School. There were two available teachers from uptown, one of whom was organist and the second was the deaconess; but there were no scholars unless we gathered them off the street. This we attempted by going out into the street and singing some of our favourite hymns. At first two, then presently three more, come cautiously near and look into our faces, wondering who we are and what we mean. Gradually the number increases, and then we venture to show them some Lesson Picture Cards; finally, there is an invitation to come inside. At this effort I am able to give the deaconess three for her class, and to the organist I appoint two. Curiosity is now aroused, and a few more venture to look in; the result -- that there are five in one class and four in another. But what about myself? I cannot afford to be doing nothing, especially when there are twenty of a larger growth standing before the door, so my lowly place, for half an hour, was a seat on the doorstep, with children on three sides of me peering over my shoulders and listening in wonder to the story which they had never before heard.
Finally I said "I must now go inside and close our meeting, but we shall have another one this evening". At this they all follow me inside, but they are very careful to sit in the pews nearest the door, while I go forward to the far end of the church. Before they are dismissed, they are given Sunday School papers and are invited to attend next Sunday. That is a beginning, and it is a day of revelation! The workers felt a wonderful joy of soul and ample reward for their efforts.
The evening meeting brought some young people from an uptown church, and our service, brightened by hearty gospel singing, began in the open air of the narrow street. When we went inside we brought our organ forward to the door, and thus retained our street audience.
Thus began a work of great import. The Christmas season saw 140 ticketed for our Christmas Tree. Suddenly we found ourselves under the condemnation of one Rabbi, who promised his people that if they permitted their children to attend any more of the meetings of the man who was a greater menace than any number of gospel preachers, he would fine them. Thus our Jewish element broke away.
What next? Our meetings went on nightly and weekly, and now we found ourselves confronted by congregations of Gentile foreigners -- for the most part Rumanian and Polish. It was Easter time when one of these suggested in the Easter week -- "Tomorrow night we make our Lord's Supper". I accepted the word, and announced that it would be even so. On that evening, after singing hymns that had been learned during the winter, and reciting Scripture that had been memorised, there were thirty men, strangers in a strange land, who felt that God was the same God everywhere, and who, acting under an improvised Liturgy, came in a body and knelt about our Communion Table as I broke to them the tokens of our Saviour's undying love. For me it was a time unforgettable.
Thomas Bondar was a young Rumanian still in his teens. He has said:- "We heard that there was a man in a church, who was teaching our people the English language, and when they were out of work, he helped them to find it; and best of all he charged them nothing. So I resolved to visit him. That night as I entered the church they were singing 'Jesus keep me near the cross'. It was the tune that captured me; the words were as Greek to me. The Missionary seemed to be the friend that I wanted, and when he gave the English alphabet, and compared it with our own, my heart was very glad, and I decided to stay with that Mission".
Thomas became a genuinely converted young man, and at twenty-three years of age had passed his second year in a Methodist Theological College. It was during that summer vacation, as he wrought on a farm to earn money for his third year's course, that he met with a serious accident that terminated his brilliant young life, and spoiled the holy ambition he had entertained of going home to Rumania "to tell my people the good news" he had learned.
By his influence, Nicholas Keepro, a companion from the same village, was likewise led to the Saviour and became a teacher in my Sunday School, and a generous contributor to church funds, until influenza suddenly seized him, and once more our vision was disappointed.
Demetre C. had been private secretary to the General who led his country's forces in the Great War -- he was a political exile; but he became a right-hand man to me, going about with me to boarding houses, reading to men the Scriptures in their native tongue.
These are samples of the rescue and regenerative work that I entered upon that year, and in the doing of which I travelled through the length and breadth of the city, and by the end of the year had written six hundred names in my books.
Nine months of my year had passed, when the Chairman visited the Mission and announced the intention "to sell out, and leave this neighbourhood". After this there were various official meetings, the promise of a new Institute, an invitation to a renewal of Superintendency, an increase in salary, a discussion in annual meetings, and at last my patience completely gave way.
I wrote my resignation of everything Methodist to the Annual Conference. And having done this, I could not turn about. What I had learned from Prayer book, Hymn book, Discipline, and Bible, remained with me, but with Fifty Dollars in my pocket, and awaiting the arrival of my Certificate of Good Ministerial Standing, I rested myself upon God, and stepped out into the street without church or parsonage, with a wife and four children to provide for, and a vast congregation of possibilities to look after. I was free, I was happy, I had no doubt but that I was right. "I have not been trying an experiment" I said. "You may have the building; I will trust God and step out and take the people". So ended the thirtieth day of June 1910.
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