Rev. William Lord said:--Rev. Anson Green was here last week and
preached. An Upper Canada Presiding Elder preaching with acceptance in
Montreal! Who would have thought of such a thing when brother Egerton
Ryerson and even brother Joseph Stinson were denied the pulpit!

[75] This gentlemen entered the Methodist ministry in 1835, and joined
the Church of England in 1841. He died some years since.

CHAPTER XXVII.

1778-1867.

The Honourable and Right Reverend Bishop Strachan.

The Venerable John Strachan, D.D., LL.D., Archdeacon of York, and
subsequently (1839-1867) first Bishop of Toronto, was the chief clerical
opponent which Dr. Ryerson encountered in the contest for religious
freedom and denominational equality during nearly twenty years.

Dr. Strachan was born in Scotland, in April, 1778, and died at Toronto,
in November 1867, in the 90th year of his age.

It was a singular coincidence that Dr. Strachan entered the ministry of
the Church of England in May, 1803, just two months after Dr. Ryerson
was born. Who could then have foreseen the respective careers of these
two remarkable men! The one, the virtual founder and administrative head
of the Church of England in Upper Canada for upwards of 60 years; and
the other, although not the founder, yet the controlling head and leader
of the Methodist Church in the Province for nearly the same period.

Dr. Strachan was an uncompromising high churchman. His exclusive views
on the "priestly authority, and the catholic and apostolic character of
the Church of England," were those of a church optimist, but they were
not based upon any profound study of the subject, as his own statement
will attest.[76]

It is interesting to note the causes which led Dr. Strachan to cling so
tenaciously to the idea of "Church and State"--a union which he regarded
as sacred, and ordained of God for the maintenance of His cause and
Church on the earth. It is no less interesting to understand the reason
why Dr. Ryerson as strenuously repudiated and resisted the practical
application of the same idea to Canada. The reason in each case may be
stated in a few words.

The one from early associations regarded the idea of Scottish parish
churches and parochial schools, supported by the State, as eminently
Scriptural, if not divinely enjoined from the earliest Jewish times. The
other was brought up in a land where such a state of things had never
existed, and where the pure gospel had b