The Arcbbishop's western Canada Appeal.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume I, Issue 1, 1 July 1910, Page 15

The Arcbbishop's western Canada Appeal.

11 A clear call comes tons. — We the Archbishops of the Church of the Motherland, plead for a real answer to the call. 1 The Bishop of Fredericton quaintly expresses the need of the call. In Canada they v ere optimists. A pessimist was a man who of two evils always chose both. In Canada, when they saw two good things, they took both. Formerly, m many parts they had a desolate, lone land, and could only boast of the biggest snow-fields and the thickest ice m the world. But at present there was life, and expansion, and growth, and development—a nation m the making. Progress which used to go over generations was now being compressed into a few short years. " Have you seeu Winnipeg?" said one man to another.

" Yes, I was there a month ago." " Ah, but you should see it now," was the reply. Out of this extraordinary expansion grew the extraordinary difficulties of the Church. Still, it was not the numbers that made the problem, but the distances a man had to cover m order to minister .to the people. Every theological college m Canada was fuller than ever. They never had such a large number of applicants for ordination. As to money help, the church m Canada assessed every diocese, every diocese assessed every parish, and every parish assessed every individual m the parish. (Cheers ) Moreover, the Laymen's Missionary Movement was sweeping across Canada and the United States. These layman organised meetings themseives, and the clergyman sometimes found, to his disgust, that he was the last to know of a missionary meeting. These laymen had started missionary, dinners ; large numbers of men of all classes attended, and heard missionary speeches from eight o'clock till halfpast ten. They were getting a race of Englishmen m Canada who had not been accustomed to support the church, and this was a real difficulty. Many were lost to the Church through the want of more clergy. From 1890 to 1900 as many as ten thousand, according to the census, were thus lost m the Province of Ontario. Stations were left unoccupied, and the Baptists, the Methodists, and others (all honour to them) came m, and many Church people knew no longer the old mother to whom they rightly belonged. And what has been the response to the call? In two months £16,000 has been given, and the first band of volunteers has sailed for Canada. Tha Rev. W. G. Boyd, the chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury as leader, and with him five other clergy, and four laymen. They propose to make for Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, and form a central house m that city to undertake work m the neighbourhood of the railways, and m distant out-stations. They are going to extend the Church and all that tha Church means to those vast throngs of our own people who are seeking a new home m Canada. In the old days when the colonist left his home to start a fresh centre of life m some dig' r nt part of the world, he was careful to take with him some of tho sacred fire burning m the altar of his own city, and to keep it burning m

his new home. These men have sailed for Canada because they do not wish her colonists to forget the sacred fire which they have left behind them. If they were communicants there they would at least give them the opportunity of being so m their new land. The Rev. Douglas Ellison is to follow later on with another band of volunteers, and perhaps ere the summer has passed there may be a third centre formed on the prairie. The workers will be scattered far and wide, but they will have the inestimable boon of belonging to a central house, whither they may turn periodically for recreation m the deepest sense. It has been for the lack of this provision that some of the best men have lost vision and spirituality m more than one continent. Also there has sailed for the extreme north of British Columbia, via Montreal, Vancouver, Alaska, and the Stickine River, the Rev. T. P. W. fhorman, rector of Harlaston, Tainworth, Staffs. Mr Thorman formerly established a mission there amongst the Tahl Tans, an Indian tribe, who make a living m those barren regions by hunting and trapping. The only other priest who knows their tongue has been incapacitated by severe frost bite, and the Bishop, Dr. dv Vernet, has requested Mr Thorman to return for two years to reorganise and carry on the work, until another priest can acquire the language. Who will say that thri days of heroic enterprise are past, when a priest who might have expected to be exempt for the future from a task which would appal the youngest and strongest, is prepared to face again the rigours of a climate which at times registers between seventy and eighty degrees below zero, and the loneliness of a post where communication with the outside world can only be reckoned on once a year. We wish him God -speed.