in Canada became a
self-dependent unit. The Bishop of Toronto was able to boast in 1842
that in his western visitation, which lasted from June till October, he
had "consecrated two churches and one burial ground, confirmed 756
persons at twenty-four different stations, and travelled, including his
journeys for the formation of District Branches of the Church Society,
upwards of 2,500 miles."[44] In cities like Toronto and Kingston it
was on the whole the church of the governing class, and shared in the
culture and public qualities of that class. Nor was it negligent of
the cure of poorer souls, for Anglicans co-operated with Presbyterians
in the {44} management of the poor schools in Kingston, and in that and
the other more prominent towns of the province, the English parish
church system seems to have been transplanted and worked most
efficiently. Equal in importance, if not in numbers, Scottish
Presbyterianism claimed its section of the community. Down to 1822,
there were but six organized congregations in Upper and Lower Canada
connected with the Church of Scotland,[45] but at the first
Presbyterian Synod held in Canada, in 1831, fourteen ministers and five
elders gathered at Kingston to represent the Church;[46] and by 1837
the number of congregations had grown to 37 in Upper Canada, and 14 in
Lower Canada. Nor were these weak and struggling efforts. The
Scottish Church at Kingston had in 1841 a membership of 350, and an
average attendance of 800. Like its Anglican rival, it was simply a
parish church, and its minister, trained in Edinburgh, as the Anglican
cleric came naturally from an English college, visited, preached, and
disciplined according to the rules of Knox and Melville, and
maintained, perhaps more genuinely than either school or {45} newspaper
could, an educational influence on his flock not unworthy of the mother
country. Here and there the ties, which still remained strong, between
Canadian settlements and the districts in Scotland whence the settlers
were drawn, proved useful aids in church extension. Lanark, in Upper
Canada, owed its church to the efforts of friends in Lanarkshire, in
Scotland, who collected no less a sum than L290 for the purpose.[47]

But the religious life of Canada was assisted by another less official
force, the Methodist Church. Methodism in its earlier days incurred
the reproach of being rather American than British, and, in one of his
most unjustifiable perversion